that you had the mind to go aboard with us--aye, and
the young ladies, too--why, you'll find no one more willing than Jasper
Begg."

We shook hands, and he set the lantern down upon the floor. Peter Bligh
was lying on his back now, crying to a calendar of saints to help him;
Seth Barker breathed like a winded horse; little Dolly Venn stood
against the wall of the pit with his head upon his arm, like a runner
after a race; the old Frenchman drew the ladder down and made all snug
as a ship is made for the night.

"No one come here," he said, "no one find the way. You sleep, and
to-morrow you signal ship to go down where I show. For me and mine,
not so. This is my home; I am stranger in my own country. No one
remember Clair-de-Lune. Twelve years I live here--five times I sleep
the dreadful sleep which the island make--five times I live where
others die. Why go home, messieurs, if you not have any? I not go;
but you, you hasten because of the sleep."

We all pricked up our ears at this curious saying, and Dolly Venn, he
whipped out a question before I could--indeed, he spoke the French
tongue very prettily; and for about five minutes the two of them went
at it hammer and tongs like two old women at charring.

"What does he mean by sleep-time, lad?" I asked in between their
argument. "Why shouldn't a man sleep on Ken's Island? What nonsense
will he talk next?"

I'd forgotten that the old man spoke English too, but he turned upon me
quickly to remind me of the fact.

"No nonsense, monsieur, as many a one has found--no nonsense at all,
but very dreadful thing. Three, four time by the year it come; three,
four time it go. All men sleep if they not go away--you sleep if you
not go away. Ah, the good God send you to the ship before that day."

He did his best to put it clearly, but he might as well have talked
Chinese. Dolly, who understood his lingo, made a brave attempt, but did
not get much farther.

"He says that this island is called by the Japanese the Island of
Sleep. Two or three times every year there comes up from the marshes a
poisonous fog which sends you into a trance from which you don't
recover, sometimes for months. It can't be true, sir, and yet that's
what he says."

"True or untrue, Dolly," said I, in a low voice, "we'll not give it the
chance. It's a fairy tale, of course, though it doesn't sound very
pretty when you hear it."

"Nor is that music any more to my liking," exclaimed Peter Bligh, at