r the rusty sides of some battered
tramp steamer; mournful men with brown faces and skinny arms, singing
their hymn with sharp cracked voices while they laboured at their
utterly preposterous task. Laughter conquered the Queen. She lay back
helpless in the merciless grip of uncontrollable merriment. Kalliope
could not laugh so much. The joke was beyond her. She sat with a
wavering half-smile on her lips watching the Queen. The box of
chocolates lay in the bottom of the boat. Kalliope stretched her foot
out, touched the box, pushed it gently towards the Queen. It seemed to
her waste of a golden opportunity to leave the box, no more than half
empty, at their feet. The movement broke the spell of the Queen's
laughter. She picked up the box, pushed chocolates into Kalliope's
mouth, filled her own with them.

CHAPTER XI

I find it necessary to remind myself from time to time that the Queen
of Salissa is a young girl, in mind and experience little more than a
child. If I think of her as a woman or allow myself to credit her with
any common sense, that blight which falls on the middle-aged, her
actions become unintelligible.

She ought, no doubt, to have gone straight to her father and told him
about the cisterns in the cave. That was the sane thing to do. Donovan
was a man of clear understanding and wide knowledge. He would have--I
do not know precisely what he would have done, but it would have been
something entirely sensible. The Queen dreaded nothing so much as
that. She found herself for the first time in her life in touch with a
mystery, surrounded by things fascinatingly incomprehensible. Her
island held a secret, was the scene--there could be no doubt about
it--of a deep, dark, perhaps dangerous plot. She was thrilled. The
more she thought of the cavern and the mysterious tanks, the more
delightful the thrills became.

She made a confidant of Phillips, choosing instinctively the only
person on the island likely to be in full sympathy with her. Phillips
was older than she was. He was twenty-eight; but he was a simple,
straightforward young man with his boyish taste for adventure
unspoiled. He was also deeply in love with the Queen.

I have found it very difficult to get either from the Queen or from
Phillips a complete and coherent account of what happened between the
discovery of the cisterns and the day when the _Ida_ sailed, taking
Phillips away from the island. I gather that they were both the
victim