dress.)

End of Act I.

ACT II. THE ISLAND

Two months have elapsed, and the scene is a desert island in the
Pacific, on which our adventurers have been wrecked.

The curtain rises on a sea of bamboo, which shuts out all view save the
foliage of palm trees and some gaunt rocks. Occasionally Crichton and
Treherne come momentarily into sight, hacking and hewing the bamboo,
through which they are making a clearing between the ladies and
the shore; and by and by, owing to their efforts, we shall have an
unrestricted outlook on to a sullen sea that is at present hidden. Then
we shall also be able to note a mast standing out of the water--all that
is left, saving floating wreckage, of the ill-fated yacht the Bluebell.
The beginnings of a hut will also be seen, with Crichton driving its
walls into the ground or astride its roof of saplings, for at present he
is doing more than one thing at a time. In a red shirt, with the ends of
his sailor's breeches thrust into wading-boots, he looks a man for
the moment; we suddenly remember some one's saying--perhaps it was
ourselves--that a cataclysm would be needed to get him out of his
servant's clothes, and apparently it has been forthcoming. It is no
longer beneath our dignity to cast an inquiring eye on his appearance.
His features are not distinguished, but he has a strong jaw and green
eyes, in which a yellow light burns that we have not seen before. His
dark hair, hitherto so decorously sleek, has been ruffled this way and
that by wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and
wanted to help his chance. His muscles must be soft and flabby still,
but though they shriek aloud to him to desist, he rains lusty blows with
his axe, like one who has come upon the open for the first time in his
life, and likes it. He is as yet far from being an expert woodsman--mark
the blood on his hands at places where he has hit them instead of the
tree; but note also that he does not waste time in bandaging them--he
rubs them in the earth and goes on. His face is still of the discreet
pallor that befits a butler, and he carries the smaller logs as if they
were a salver; not in a day or a month will he shake off the badge of
servitude, but without knowing it he has begun.

But for the hatchets at work, and an occasional something horrible
falling from a tree into the ladies' laps, they hear nothing save the
mournful surf breaking on a coral shore.

They sit or recline huddle