utiful. Steep hills, rocky and mountainous,
rose precipitately out of the blue waters, and the rising sun glinted
upon the topmost peaks of the hills and threw their deep shadows down
upon the bay, and upon the group of yellow stucco bungalows that
clustered together upon the edge of the water, upon the narrow strip
of land lying between the sea and the sheer sides of the backing
mountains. The bay was a crescent, almost closed, and a coral reef ran
in an encircling sweep from the headland beyond, and the translucent,
sparkling waters of the harbour seemed beautiful beyond belief. His
heart beat wildly when for the first time he beheld his new home--it
exceeded in beauty anything that he had ever dreamed of. What mattered
it whether or no it was a Penal Settlement for one of the great,
outlying colonies of his mother country, two days' sail from the
nearest port on the mainland, the port itself ten thousand miles from
home. It was beautiful to look upon--glorious to look upon, and it was
glorious to think that the next few years of his life would be spent
amidst such surroundings. The captain of the coasting steamer told him
it would be lonely--he laughed at the idea. How could one be lonely
amidst such beauty as that! His thirsty soul craved beauty, and here
it was before him, marvellous, complete, the island a gem sparkling in
the sunlight, veiled in the shadow of an early morning. Lying
somewhere, all this beauty, one degree north or south of the Equator!

No, assuredly, he would not be lonely! Were there not many families on
the island, the officials and their families, a good ten or fifteen of
them? Besides, there was his work. He knew nothing of his work, of his
duties. But in connection with the prisoners, of course--and there
were fifteen hundred prisoners, they told him, concentrated on those
few square miles of island, off somewhere in the Southern Seas, a few
miles north or south of the Equator. He was anxious to see the
prisoners, the unruly ones of the colony. Strange types they would
appear to his conventional, sophisticated eyes. He saw them in
imagination--yellow skins, brown skins, black skins, picturesque,
daring, desperate perhaps. The anchor splashed overboard into the
shallow water, and the small steamer drifted on the end of the chain,
waiting for a boat to come out from shore. With the cessation of the
steamer's movement, he felt the heat radiate round him, in an
overpowering wave, making him feel