d intention to watch night and day for the faintest glimmer
of her lights, or the faintest wreath of her smoke on the far eastern
horizon. They had ventured to confide their design to all three of
their Shadows; and the Shadows, attached by the kindness to which they
were so little accustomed among their own people, had in every case
agreed to assist them with the canoe, if occasion served them. So for a
time the two doomed victims subsided into their accustomed calm of
mingled hope and despair, waiting patiently for the expected arrival of
the much-longed-for Australasian.

If she took that course once, why not a second time? And if ever she hove
in sight, might they not hope, after all, to signal to her with their
rudely constructed heliograph, and stop her?

As for Methuselah's secret, there was only one way, Felix thought, in
which it could now prove of any use to them. When the actual day of their
doom drew nigh, he might, perhaps, be tempted to try the fate which
Nathaniel Cross, of Sunderland, had successfully courted. That might gain
them at least a little respite. Though even so he hardly knew what good
it could do him to be elevated for a while into the chief god of the
island. It might not even avail him to save Muriel's life; for he did not
doubt that when the awful day itself had actually come the natives would
do their best to kill her in spite of him, unless he anticipated them by
fulfilling his own terrible, yet merciful, promise.

Week after week went by--month after month passed--and the date when the
Australasian might reasonably be expected to reappear drew nearer and
nearer. They waited and trembled. At last, a few days before the time
M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree
in his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred,
lay within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms
was heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or
fled. It announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.

By this time both the castaways had grown comparatively accustomed to
that hideous noise, and to the hateful presence which it preceded and
heralded. A dozen temple attendants tripped on either side down the
hillpath, to guard him, clapping their hands in a barbaric measure as
they went; Fire and Water, in the midst, supported and flanked the divine
umbrella. Felix rose from his seat with very little ceremony, indeed, as
the