Edna stood on the beach, gazing out on the ocean illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, keeping her eyes fixed on the captain's boat until it became a mere speck. Then, when it had vanished entirely among the lights and shades of the evening sea, she still stood a little while and watched. Then she turned and slowly walked up to the plateau. Everything there was just as she had known it for weeks. The great stone face seemed to smile in the last rays of the setting sun. Mrs. Cliff came to meet her, her face glowing with smiles, and Ralph threw his arms around her neck and kissed her, without, however, saying a word about that sort of thing having been omitted in the ceremony of the afternoon.
"My dear Edna," exclaimed Mrs. Cliff, "from the bottom of my heart I congratulate you! No matter how we look at it, a rare piece of good fortune has come to you."
Edna gazed at her for a moment, and then she answered quietly, "Oh, yes, it was a fine thing, no matter what happens. If he does not come back, I shall make a bold stroke for widowhood; and if he does come back, he is bound, after all this, to give me a good share of that treasure. So, you see, we have done the best we can do to be rich and happy, if we are not so unlucky as to perish among these rocks and sand."
"She is almost as horrible as Ralph," thought Mrs. Cliff, "but she will get over it."
CHAPTER XVIII
MRS. CLIFF IS AMAZED
After the captain set sail in his little boat, the party which he left behind him lived on in an uneventful, uninteresting manner, which, gradually, day by day, threw a shadow over the spirits of each one of them.
Ralph, who always slept in the outer chamber of the caves, had been a very faithful guardian of the captain's treasure. No one, not even himself, had gone near it, and he never went up to the rocky promontory on which he had raised his signal-pole without knowing that the two negroes were at a distance from the caves, or within his sight.
For a day or two after the captain's departure Edna was very quiet, with a fancy for going off by herself. But she soon threw off this dangerous disposition, and took up her old profession of teacher, with Ralph as the scholar, and mathematics as the study. They had no books nor even paper, but the rules and principles of her specialty were fresh in her mind, and with a pointed stick on a smooth stretch of sand diagrams were drawn and problems worked out.
This occupation was a most excellent thing for Edna and her brother, but it did not help Mrs. Cliff to endure with patience the weary days of waiting. She had nothing to read, nothing to do, very often no one to talk to, and she would probably have fallen into a state of nervous melancholy had not Edna persuaded her to devote an hour or two each day to missionary work with Mok and Cheditafa. This Mrs. Cliff cheerfully undertook. She was a conscientious woman, and her methods of teaching were peculiar. She had an earnest desire to do the greatest amount of good with these poor, ignorant negroes, but, at the same time, she did not wish to do injury to any one else. The conviction forced itself upon her that if she absolutely converted Cheditafa from the errors of his native religion, she might in some way invalidate the marriage ceremony which he had performed.