at way out, it seemed, so far out that its
cramping influence was removed, and one had the impression of wide and
unbroken sea.

Dick rested on his oars, and let the dinghy float whilst he looked
around him. He had come some four miles and a half, and this was right
at the back of the island. As the boat drifting shoreward touched the
bank, Emmeline awakened from her sleep, sat up, and looked around her.

BOOK II

PART I

CHAPTER I

UNDER THE ARTU TREE

On the edge of the green sward, between a diamond-chequered artu trunk
and the massive bole of a breadfruit, a house had come into being. It
was not much larger than a big hen-house, but quite sufficient for the
needs of two people in a climate of eternal summer. It was built of
bamboos, and thatched with a double thatch of palmetto leaves, so
neatly built, and so well thatched, that one might have fancied it the
production of several skilled workmen.

The breadfruit tree was barren of fruit, as these trees sometimes are,
whole groves of them ceasing to bear for some mysterious reason only
known to Nature. It was green now, but when suffering its yearly change
the great scalloped leaves would take all imaginable tinges of gold and
bronze and amber. Beyond the artu was a little clearing, where the
chapparel had been carefully removed and taro roots planted.

Stepping from the house doorway on to the sward you might have fancied
yourself, except for the tropical nature of the foliage, in some
English park.

Looking to the right, the eye became lost in the woods, where all tints
of green were tinging the foliage, and the bushes of the wild cocoa-nut
burned scarlet as hawberries.

The house had a doorway, but no door. It might have been said to have a
double roof, for the breadfruit foliage above gave good shelter during
the rains. Inside it was bare enough. Dried, sweet-smelling ferns
covered the floor. Two sails, rolled up, lay on either side of the
doorway. There was a rude shelf attached to one of the walls, and on
the shelf some bowls made of cocoa-nut shell. The people to whom the
place belonged evidently did not trouble it much with their presence,
using it only at night, and as a refuge from the dew.

Sitting on the grass by the doorway, sheltered by the breadfruit shade,
yet with the hot rays of the afternoon sun just touching her naked
feet, was a girl. A girl of fifteen or sixteen, naked, except for a
kilt of gaily-striped material reaching