Chapter Nine.
An Island Paradise.
The next morning dawned as fine as heart could wish, with a cloudless sky of matchless blue, and a “glass” that showed a rising rather than a falling tendency. Immediately after breakfast, therefore, Leslie emerged from the brig’s cabin provided with a basket of provisions neatly packed by the fair Flora’s hand and daintily covered with a spotlessly white cloth. This he deposited in the stern-sheets of his boat; and then addressed Sailor, who stood at the gangway watching the proceedings with eager interest.
“Now, Sailor, come along down, boy; that’s a good dog, then. Come down, you sir, I say!”
Sailor wagged his tail excitedly, and barked in response, making a great show of being about to jump down into the boat, but baulking at the last moment and looking round anxiously to see whether his beloved mistress were coming, then approaching the side again and barking a response to Leslie’s blandishments, but dexterously avoiding the efforts of the latter to capture and drag him down into the boat; and so on ad infinitum At length, however, Miss Trevor made her appearance, a radiant vision in white, and armed against the assaults of the too-ardent sun with a white lace parasol—one of the many spoils of the late skipper’s speculative investment—and approached the head of the side-ladder that Leslie had rigged for her accommodation. Then, as she began to descend, Sailor hesitated no longer but, fearing lest he should lose his passage, sprang down into the frail craft with an abandon that nearly capsized her, and placed himself in the eyes of the boat, obediently to a signal from Leslie’s hand. Another moment and Flora had taken her place in the stern, and Leslie was bearing-off from the brig’s side.
With her load of three—for Sailor was nearly as heavy as his mistress—the boat proved to be somewhat crank, and Leslie had a momentary spasm of regret that he had not tied up the dog and left him aboard the brig, instead of bringing him with them; but the water was quite smooth, and they all sat still. The passage was consequently accomplished without mishap; and in about an hour from the moment of starting they all three stood safely on the dazzlingly white beach of coral sand that stretched for about a mile in either direction from the spot where they had landed. From here the hull of the brig looked little more than a small inconspicuous spot against the snow-white cloud of surf that broke eternally upon the outer edge of the barrier reef; and Leslie made a mental note to pull off aboard again betimes in the afternoon, for it would be practically impossible to hit off her position in the darkness.
The beach on which they stood was of no great width, some sixty or seventy feet wide, perhaps, from the water’s edge to the spot where it abruptly met the luxuriant growth of thick guinea-grass that seemed to form the turf of the island. Immediately opposite the spot where they had landed there stretched a clear space of this turf, measuring about a quarter of a square mile in area, entirely unencumbered by bush, or tree, or shrub of any kind. Leslie recognised this as the spot that he had already fixed upon, while aboard the brig, as the site for his camp; and his nearer inspection of it now satisfied him that it was eminently suitable for the purpose and indeed could not be improved upon. Beyond the confines of this open space, to right, left, and rear of it, shrubs and small bushes grew at first sparsely and, further on, in greater profusion, until ultimately this more or less scattered growth merged into the dense and apparently impenetrable bush and forest with which the entire island appeared to be clothed.
When Leslie’s eyes had first fallen upon this island an uneasy suspicion had arisen within him that so comparatively large and important an area must almost of necessity be inhabited; and he had not been altogether free from doubt as to what, in such a case, the disposition of its inhabitants might be toward him and his companion. He had an idea that he had somewhere heard or read that the natives of certain of the Pacific islands were addicted to cannibalism; and he felt that if by any evil chance this particular island should happen to be inhabited by such a race, the cup of their misfortunes would be full. Consequently, the work of constructing his pontoons had been frequently broken into by long and anxious examinations of the island through the telescope, in a search for indications of the presence of inhabitants.
These examinations had entirely failed to reveal any such indications; and the hope had gradually arisen in his mind that, after all, the island might prove to be uninhabited. But he was not yet by any means satisfied that this hope was well-grounded, and he determined that this first visit of his to the place should be mainly devoted to a further search and examination. Before doing anything further, therefore, he suggested to Flora that they should walk the entire length of the beach—keeping to the grass as far as possible, in order to leave the surface of the sand quite undisturbed—so that he might be able to carefully and systematically scrutinise it in search of footprints. For he argued that if savages really existed on this island, they could scarcely have failed to discover the existence of the wreck during the week that she had lain upon the reef; in which case they would most probably have gathered at the water’s edge, at the nearest possible point, for the purpose of examining her. And since this particular strip of beach happened to be nearer the wreck than any other point of the island, he felt tolerably certain that footprints would be found upon it, if anywhere. A strong point in favour of the assumption that the island was uninhabited was the fact that the wreck had not been approached by canoes; for Leslie felt that if she had been seen by natives, they would scarcely have left her unvisited for an entire week.