"I don't think they can be taught to dance, massa Crusoe," remarked Frank.
"I fear not, Friday."
From the hill they could see all "wound the world," as Toddie phrased it. What a beautiful world it was too, a world of peaceful blue waters, a world of blue sky, fleecy cloudlets and sunshine, but apparently a world of lonesomeness! They could barely see the mainland, and they could just make out some islands lying far away to the west, with one steamboat, the smoke trailing like a dark snake far in the rear, but never a ship was there to be seen, and not even a boat.
As they were gazing westwards Toddie noticed a fountain of white spray rise up out of the blue water, and presently another. She clapped her hands with delight.
"Oh," she cried, "it is a Johnnie whale!"
And the Johnnie whale came nearer and nearer till they could see his huge bulk rising and falling in the sea.
Soon after a merry shoal of porpoises passed close to the island. They were leaping out of the water, and even cooing in their joy. But Toddie's thoughts and sympathies were with that Johnnie whale.
"Oh," she said, as if the whale could hear her, "don't tome near the shole, Johnnie. Swim home, oo silly whale, oo mammy will die if she never sees oo any more."
The children walked all round the cliff edge. They found one other bay or harbour, but with the exception of this and the cove into which the little yacht had been so providentially thrown, the shores of this island presented to the waves a dark and impenetrable barrier. They explored the little harbour. There were the ashes of a fire that had long, long been extinguished, but no mark of a single footprint in the sand to show that any boat had been recently here. So they went slowly back to their yacht. The sea-birds screaming in myriads about them, and the wild rabbits here and there on the stone-covered sides of grey hillocks standing up on their hind legs and wonderingly looking at the little strangers. Indeed, the wildness of the sheep, and the few goats, and the exceeding tameness of the coneys and gulls, were proofs that the island was seldom visited.
For the time being our little heroes were undoubtedly monarchs of all they surveyed.