lagoon out to sea, when
he returned laden with his bananas, and, rushing into the water up to
his waist, saved her. Another time he had fallen out of a tree, and
just by a miracle escaped death. Another time a hurricane had broken,
lashing the lagoon into snow, and sending the cocoa-nuts bounding and
flying like tennis balls across the strand. This time he had just
escaped something, he knew not exactly what. It was almost as if
Providence were saying to him, "Don't come here."

He watched the brown sails as they dwindled in the wind-blown blue,
then he came down from the hill-top and cut his bananas. He cut four
large bunches, which caused him to make two journeys to the boat. When
the bananas were stowed he pushed off.

For a long time a great curiosity had been pulling at his
heart-strings: a curiosity of which he was dimly ashamed. Fear had
given it birth, and Fear still clung to it. It was, perhaps, the
element of fear and the awful delight of daring the unknown that made
him give way to it.

He had rowed, perhaps, a hundred yards when he turned the boat's head
and made for the reef. It was more than five years since that day when
he rowed across the lagoon, Emmeline sitting in the stern, with her
wreath of flowers in her hand. It might have been only yesterday, for
everything seemed just the same. The thunderous surf and the flying
gulls, the blinding sunlight, and the salt, fresh smell of the sea. The
palm tree at the entrance of the lagoon still bent gazing into the
water, and round the projection of coral to which he had last moored
the boat still lay a fragment of the rope which he had cut in his hurry
to escape.

Ships had come into the lagoon, perhaps, during the five years, but no
one had noticed anything on the reef, for it was only from the hill-top
that a full view of what was there could be seen, and then only by eyes
knowing where to look. From the beach there was visible just a speck.
It might have been, perhaps, a bit of old wreckage flung there by a
wave in some big storm. A piece of old wreckage that had been tossed
hither and thither for years, and had at last found a place of rest.

Dick tied the boat up, and stepped on to the reef. It was high tide
just as before; the breeze was blowing strongly, and overhead a
man-of-war's bird, black as ebony, with a blood-red bill, came sailing,
the wind doming out his wings. He circled in the air, and cried out
fiercely, as if resenting the presence