They had landed in paradise.
Even Welch yielded to that universal longing men have to embrace the land after perils at sea, and was putting his leg slowly over the gunwale, when Hazel came back to his assistance. He got ashore, but was contented to sit down with his eyes on the dimpled sea and the boat, waiting quietly till the tide should float his friend to his feet again.
The sea-birds walked quietly about him, and minded him not.
Miss Rolleston ascended a green slope very slowly, for her limbs were cramped, and was lost to view.
Hazel now went up the beach, and took a more minute survey of the neighborhood.
The west side of the bay was varied. Half of it presented the soft character that marked the bay in general; but a portion of it was rocky, though streaked with vegetation, and this part was intersected by narrow clefts, into which, in some rare tempests and high tides combined, tongues of the sea had entered, licking the sides of the gullies smooth; and these occasional visits were marked by the sand and broken shells and other debris the tempestuous and encroaching sea had left behind.
The true high-water mark was several feet lower than these debris, and was clearly marked. On the land above the cliffs he found a tangled jungle of tropical shrubs, into which he did not penetrate, but skirted it, and, walking eastward, came out upon a delicious down or grassy slope, that faced the center of the bay. It was a gentleman's lawn of a thousand acres, with an extremely gentle slope from the center of the island down to the sea.
A river flowing from some distant source ran eastward through this down, but at its verge, and almost encircled it. Hazel traversed the lawn until this river, taking a sudden turn toward the sea, intercepted him at a spot which he immediately fixed on as Helen Rolleston's future residence.
Four short, thick, umbrageous trees stood close to the stream on this side, and on the eastern side was a grove of gigantic palm-trees, at whose very ankles the river ran. Indeed, it had undermined one of these palm-trees, and that giant at this moment lay all across the stream, leaving a gap through which Hazel's eye could pierce to a great depth among those grand columns; for they stood wide apart, and there was not a vestige of brushwood, jungle, or even grass below their enormous crowns. He christened the place St. Helen's on the spot.
He now dipped his baler into the stream and found it pure and tolerably cool.