peak,
rising to a height of nearly three thousand feet. At its base on
three sides lies a plateau, its edges gnawed away by the sea to the
underlying rocky skeleton. On the southeastern quarter the peak
drops by a series of great precipices straight into the sea.

Back from the cove stretches a little hollow, its floor rising
gently to the level of the plateau. Innumerable clear springs
which burst from the mountain converge to a limpid stream, which
winds through the hollow to fall into the little bay. All the
plateau and much of the peak are clothed with woods, a beautiful
bright green against the sapphire of sea and sky. High above all
other growth wave the feathery tops of the cocoa-palms, which
flourish here luxuriantly. You saw them in their thousands,
slender and swaying, tossing all together in the light sea-wind
their crowns of nodding plumes.

The palms were nowhere more abundant than in the hollow by the cove
where our camp was made, and their size and the regularity of their
order spoke of cultivation. Guavas, oranges and lemons grew here,
too, and many beautiful banana-palms. The rank forest growth had
been so thoroughly cleared out that it had not yet returned, except
stealthily in the shape of brilliant-flowered creepers which wound
their sinuous way from tree to tree, like fair Delilahs striving to
overcome arboreal Samsons by their wiles. They were rankest beside
the stream, which ran at one edge of the hollow under the rise of
the plateau.

At the side of the clearing toward the stream stood a hut, built of
cocoa-palm logs. Its roof of palm-thatch had been scattered by
storms. Nearer the stream on a bench were an old decaying wash-tub
and a board. A broken frying-pan and a rusty axe-head lay in the
grass.

In the hut itself were a rude bedstead, a small table, and a
cupboard made of boxes. I was excited at first, and fancied we had
come upon the dwelling of a marooned pirate. Without taking the
trouble to combat this opinion, Mr. Shaw explained to Cuthbert Vane
that a copra gatherer had once lived here, and that the place must
have yielded such a profit that he was only surprised to find it
deserted now. Behind this cool, unemphatic speech I sensed an
ironic zest in the destruction of my pirate.

After their thrilling experience of being ferried from the _Rufus
Smith_ to the island, my aunt and Miss Browne had been easily
persuaded to dispose themselves for naps. Aunt Jane, how