the deeper parts of the lagoon.

It was late afternoon, and the heat had gone out of the day. Emmeline,
seated on the grass opposite to him, was holding the end of the line,
whilst he got the kinks out of it, when suddenly she raised her head.

There was not a breath of wind; the hush of the far-distant surf came
through the blue weather--the only audible sound except, now and then,
a movement and flutter from the bird perched in the branches of the
artu. All at once another sound mixed itself with the voice of the
surf--a faint, throbbing sound, like the beating of a distant drum.

"Listen!" said Emmeline.

Dick paused for a moment in his work. All the sounds of the island were
familiar: this was something quite strange.

Faint and far away, now rapid, now slow; coming from where, who could
say? Sometimes it seemed to come from the sea, sometimes, if the fancy
of the listener turned that way, from the woods. As they listened, a
sigh came from overhead; the evening breeze had risen and was moving in
the leaves of the artu tree. Just as you might wipe a picture off a
slate, the breeze banished the sound. Dick went on with his work.

Next morning early he embarked in the dinghy. He took the hook and line
with him, and some raw fish for bait. Emmeline helped him to push off,
and stood on the bank waving her hand as he rounded the little cape
covered with wild cocoa-nut.

These expeditions of Dick's were one of her sorrows. To be left alone
was frightful; yet she never complained. She was living in a paradise,
but something told her that behind all that sun, all that splendour of
blue sea and sky, behind the flowers and the leaves, behind all that
specious and simpering appearance of happiness in nature, lurked a
frown, and the dragon of mischance.

Dick rowed for about a mile, then he shipped his sculls, and let the
dinghy float. The water here was very deep; so deep that, despite its
clearness, the bottom was invisible; the sunlight over the reef struck
through it diagonally, filling it with sparkles.

The fisherman baited his hook with a piece from the belly of a scarus
and lowered it down out of sight, then he belayed the line to a thole
pin, and, sitting in the bottom of the boat, hung his head over the
side and gazed deep down into the water. Sometimes there was nothing to
see but just the deep blue of the water. Then a flight of spangled
arrowheads would cross the line of sight and vanish, pursued by a for