"Yes."
"Oh, they're in the boat still," said Floyd, rising up.
He went to the boat where she lay high and dry on the sand, and took out the tin box.
He brought it back to where Schumer and Isbel were sitting by the embers of the fire, and, taking his place on the sand beside them, opened the box and took out the bag of sovereigns.
He undid the string and poured the contents of the bag onto the hard sand of the beach.
There were two hundred and ten sovereigns—as they afterward counted—and the moon, which had just pushed up its face over the eastern reef edge, lit the pile which Floyd was now stirring with his finger, while Schumer, who had drawn himself closer on his elbow, looked on without a word. Isbel had drawn closer, too.
She had spoken very little as yet, and when she spoke it was a pleasure to listen.
To attempt the reproduction of Polynesian speech is fatal, and the authors who attempt it succeed in producing only a disgusting form of pidgin English. It is impossible to reproduce the inflections, the softness, the timbre, the soul of it. It is equally impossible to reproduce the infantile French of the West Indies.
Isbel's language was the human equivalent of the language of the soft-voiced birds; more than that, the missionary who had brought her up had guarded her from the vile "savvee" and "um" and "allee same" that foul the speech of the lower natives.
How much the missionary teaching had bent her mind to Eastern ideals or influenced her nature it would be impossible to say. There was a great deal of mystery about Isbel, centuries and centuries of the unknown and unrealized gazing from those eyes so dark and unfathomable.