denly appeared
before him, and he recognised it.

He stood for a long time motionless, and then with a deep sigh turned
to the boat and pushed off without once looking back at the reef. He
crossed the lagoon and rowed slowly homewards, keeping in the shelter
of the tree shadows as much as possible.

Even looking at him from the shore you might have noticed a difference
in him. Your savage paddles his canoe, or sculls his boat, alert,
glancing about him, at touch with nature at all points; though he be
lazy as a cat and sleeps half the day, awake he is all ears and eyes--a
creature reacting to the least external impression.

Dick, as he rowed back, did not look about him: he was thinking or
retrospecting. The savage in him had received a check. As he turned the
little cape where the wild cocoanut blazed, he looked over his
shoulder. A figure was standing on the sward by the edge of the water.
It was Emmeline.

CHAPTER VII

THE SCHOONER

They carried the bananas up to the house, and hung them from a branch
of the artu. Then Dick, on his knees, lit the fire to prepare the
evening meal. When it was over he went down to where the boat was
moored, and returned with something in his hand. It was the javelin
with the iron point or, rather, the two pieces of it. He had said
nothing of what he had seen to the girl.

Emmeline was seated on the grass; she had a long strip of the striped
flannel stuff about her, worn like a scarf, and she had another piece
in her hand which she was hemming. The bird was hopping about, pecking
at a banana which they had thrown to him; a light breeze made the
shadow of the artu leaves dance upon the grass, and the serrated leaves
of the breadfruit to patter one on the other with the sound of
rain-drops falling upon glass.

"Where did you get it?" asked Emmeline, staring at the piece of the
javelin which Dick had flung down almost beside her whilst he went into
the house to fetch the knife.

"It was on the beach over there," he replied, taking his seat and
examining the two fragments to see how he could splice them together.

Emmeline looked at the pieces, putting them together in her mind. She
did not like the look of the thing: so keen and savage, and stained
dark a foot and more from the point.

"People had been there," said Dick, putting the two pieces together and
examining the fracture critically.

"Where?"

"Over there. This was lying on the sand, and the sand was all tr