ever,
could not be at rest until Mr. Tubbs had been restored by a cordial
which she extracted with much effort from the depths of her
hand-bag. He partook with gravity and the rolled up eyes of
gratitude, and retired grimacing to comfort himself from a private
bottle of his own.

The boats of the _Rufus Smith_ had departed from the island, and
our relations with humanity were severed. The thought of our
isolation awed and fascinated me as I sat meditatively upon a keg
of nails watching the miracle of the tropic dawn. The men were
hard at work with bales and boxes, except Mr. Tubbs, who gave
advice. It must have been valuable advice, for he assured
everybody that a word from his lips had invariably been enough to
make Wall Street sit up and take notice. But it is a far cry from
Wall Street to Leeward Island. Mr. Tubbs, ignored, sought refuge
with me at last, and pointed out the beauties of Aroarer as she
rose from the embrace of Neptune.

"Aroarer Borealis, to be accurate," he explained, "but they didn't
use parties' surnames much in classic times."

The glad cry of breakfast put an end to Mr. Tubbs's exposition of
mythology.

So does dull reality clog the feet of dreams that it proved
impossible to begin the day by digging up the treasure. Camp had
to be arranged, for folk must eat and sleep even with the wealth of
the Indies to be had for the turning of a sod. The cabin was
reroofed and set apart as the bower of Aunt Jane and Miss Browne.
I declined to make a third in this sanctuary. You could tell by
looking at her that Violet was the sort of person who would
inevitably sleep out loud.

"Hang me up in a tree or anywhere," I insisted, and it ended by my
having a tarpaulin shelter rigged up in a group of cocoa-palms.

Among our earliest discoveries on the island was one regrettable
from the point of view of romance, though rich in practical
advantages; the woods were the abode of numerous wild pigs. This
is not to write a new chapter on the geographical distribution of
the pig, for they were of the humdrum domestic variety, and had
doubtless appertained to the copra gatherer's establishment. But
you should have seen how clean, how seemly, how self-respecting
were our Leeward Island pigs to realize how profoundly the pig of
Christian lands is a debased and slandered animal. These
quadrupeds would have strengthened Jean Jacques's belief in the
primitive virtue of man before civilization debauched him