"HIS ISLAND PRINCESS."

Thames Star, Volume LXV, Issue 18241, 15 July 1931, Page 4

"HIS ISLAND PRINCESS."

OUIS SERIAL STORY

BY W. CLARK RUSSELL.

CHAPTER Vl—Continued

looboo. "What a noble spirit!" thought I, and I felt my admiration of her glowed in my face. "Did the boat follow you easily?" said I. "Oh, yes," she answered. " 'Tis as light as the canoe." This said, she asked me questions about England—if London was a line city, and the country as pretty as her island. I answered her truthfully, but with discretion, as I did not wish, at all events at this early season, to say a word that was like to raise a mutinous thought in her against her father's extraordinary crazy dream of a life-long imprisonment for himself and her, without forecast as to what was to become of her if he should be taken first. These thoughts hurried in my mind and came together in little regiments of impulses, which I guessed would presently grow compact in a resolution, as I looked at the beautiful half-wild young creature who stepped at my side arrayed in nothing, as I have said, but the white cloth of the South Sea islander, which left naked her arms, though, in other concealments, take my word, 'twas more commendable than a hue of modesty very different from the attire in which our women of quality and others appear at balls, and in which the nymphs of the light fantastic toe dance, swim, languish, an ogle to crowded pits and boxes. She asked me if I knew Lima. When I said "No," "Oh," she cries, "it is a glorious city!"

"You remember it?" "Very well. I was mo-re than six years old when we were wrecked. The country all about it is as beautiful as this, and it has vineyards and sugar works and delightful plants. Some of the churches axe magnificent with gold. I remember the church of St. Augustine and St. Dominic, and we used to attendOur Lady of Mercedes." "You are a Roman Catholic?" "My mother was, and I am," she answered. Here Captain Scott stopped and we came up with him in silence. "I have been thinking'," says he, "that when you have a mind to leave the island, which I hope will not be soon, you cannot do better than make for Otaheite." "Am I to believe," says I, "that no ship ever passes this island?" "Consider, sir, these waters continue practically unnavigated. If you are to wait for a ship you will live and die here." So saying, he pushed on, and we marched witn him. Eulalie was silent, but I observed that she smiled when he spoke ot my living and dying in the island. 1 wondered if it was his wish that 1 snould go, if, having rescued me from death, he should have now become impatient of me as an intruder. "Twas sure 1 had to deal with a madman who had no mind that he settle for himself, and whose judgments therefore could not be settled for him, The walk from the house to the creek was about half a mile. The creek came into the land in a gentle curve, and was fed by the bright Mowing river which made a quiet stream in the middle of its bosom; on either hand the water lay calm. But the motion of stream disappeared about midway, and the water at the mouth of the creek was tidal. It was, indeed, a little natural harbour such as one may again and again meet with in the South Seas. The land was embroidered with verdure, upon which was enamelled a vast variety of tropic plants, and out of these sprang great clusters of the cocoa-nut tree and the palm on both sides of the creek. Their spreading branches cast a violet shadow on its waters, and in parts they made the banks dim as even-ing-tide. The canoe and boat lay together, secured by their painters to trees. I cannot express the horror that seized me when I looked at the boat. The memory of .the frightful nightmare I had passed in her returned to me with such overwhelming vehemence that the real experience scarce caused me more suffering. I shuddered, trembled and sweated when I thought of Tuckett's death, of my fiery thirst, of Jonah's cannibal madness. My looking at that boat indeed made me feel no doubt much as "half-hanged Jack" would have felt on viewing the gibbet from Avhich he had been cut down, or as a man might feel who peers into the bla.ck dungeon in which he languished for twenty years, and notes bow patiently he scratched his name with a nail. I now observed that the halliards had parted, letting the yard of the lug fall. Had I been seated at the foot of the mast I should have been covered with the canvas, I should not have been seen, and the boat, being thought empty, would have been passed by. \ "Both these vessels have their story, sir," said I. "Yes," answered Captain Scott. "Yours is told. But a dead man keeps his own secrets, and I shall never know why that canoe stranded with a corpse in her, how many there were who perislhed in her,- and where she came from." "How ugly she is compared to your boat!" said Eulalie. '{To be continued).