ders. "How grand you are!" she said. "I am," I answered; then I
added, "Miss Croyden, for Heaven's sake don't touch me on the ear. I
can't stand it." I turned from her and looked out over the sea.
Presently I heard something like a groan behind me. The girl had thrown
herself on the sand and was coiled up in a hoop. "Miss Croyden," I said,
"for God's sake don't coil up in a hoop."

I rushed to the beach and rubbed gravel on my face.

With such activities, alternated with wild bursts of restraint, our life
on the island passed as rapidly as in a dream. Had I not taken care to
notch the days upon a stick and then cover the stick with tar, I could
not have known the passage of the time. The wearing out of our clothing
had threatened a serious difficulty. But by good fortune I had seen a
large black and white goat wandering among the rocks and had chased it
to a standstill. From its skin, leaving the fur still on, Edith had
fashioned us clothes. Our boots we had replaced with alligator hide. I
had, by a lucky chance, found an alligator upon the beach, and attaching
a string to the fellow's neck I had led him to our camp. I had then
poisoned the fellow with tinned salmon and removed his hide.

Our costume was now brought into harmony with our surroundings. For
myself, garbed in goatskin with the hair outside, with alligator sandals
on my feet and with whiskers at least six inches long, I have no doubt
that I resembled the beau ideal of a cave man. With the open-air life a
new agility seemed to have come into my limbs. With a single leap in my
alligator sandals I was enabled to spring into a coco-nut tree.

As for Edith Croyden, I can only say that as she stood beside me on the
beach in her suit of black goatskin (she had chosen the black spots)
there were times when I felt like seizing her in the frenzy of my
passion and hurling her into the sea. Fur always acts on me just like
that.

It was at the opening of the fifth week of our life upon the island that
a new and more surprising turn was given to our adventure. It arose out
of a certain curiosity, harmless enough, on Edith Croyden's part. "Mr.
Borus," she said one morning, "I should like so much to see the rest of
our island. Can we?"

"Alas, Miss Croyden," I said, "I fear that there is but little to see.
Our island, so far as I can judge, is merely one of the uninhabited keys
of the West Indies. It is nothing but rock and sand and scrub. There is
no life upon it. I