e we were, the
five of us--a precious bad lot, to be sure--marooned!"

CHAPTER XX

THE POSSIBLE REASON

At that last word, spoken with an emphasis which showed that it awoke
no very pleasant memories in the speaker, Miss Raven looked
questioningly from one to the other of us.

"Marooned?" she said. "What is that, exactly?"

Baxter gave her an indulgent and me a knowing look.

"I daresay Mr. Middlebrook can give you the exact etymological meaning
of the word better than I can, Miss Raven," he answered. "But I can
tell you what the thing means in actual practice! It means to put a
man, or men, ashore, preferably on a desert island, leaving him, or
them, to fend for himself, or themselves, as best he, or they, can! It
may mean slow starvation--at best it means living on what you can pick
up by your own ingenuity, on shell-fish and that sort of thing, even
on edible sea-weed. Marooned? Yes! that was the only experience I ever
had of that--it's all very well talking of it now, as we sit here on a
comfortable little vessel, with a bottle of good wine before us, but
at the time--ah!"

"You'd a stiff time of it?" I suggested.

"Worse than you'd believe," he answered. "That old Yankee skipper was
a vindictive chap, with method in him. He'd purposely gone off the
beaten track to land us on that island, and he played his game so
cleverly that not even the Quicks--who were as subtle as snakes!--knew
anything of his intentions until we were all marched over the side at
the point of ugly-looking revolvers. If it hadn't been for that little
Chinese whom you've just seen we would have starved, for the island
was little more than a reef of rock, rising to a sort of peak in its
centre--worn-out volcano, I imagine--and with nothing eatable on it in
the way of flesh or fruit. But Chuh was a God-send! He was clever at
fishing, and he showed us an edible sea-weed out of which he made good
eating, and he discovered a spring of water--altogether he kept us
alive. All of which," he suddenly added, with a darkening look, "made
the conduct of these two Quicks not merely inexcusable, but devilish!"

"What did they do?" I asked.

"I'm coming to it," he said. "All in due order. We were on that island
several weeks, and from the time we were flung unceremoniously upon
its miserable shores to the day we left it we never saw a sail nor a
wisp of smoke from a steamer. And it may be that this, and our
privations, made us still more b