All was very calm here now as the romantic young man indulged in these meditations. There was no sign of life about the island--of human life; it was as still as though it were uninhabited. Yet all the tropic life was there, all the gorgeous colouring of which the Yankee settler--if he were a Yankee--who told him the story of the place had spoken. The fan-palms, the moriches, and the gros-gros grew side by side; red poinsettias mingled with wild begonias, purple dracæna and yellow crotons; the rattans and orchids were tangled together in an indescribable confusion of beauty.
"It is the isle of Nicholas's description. No doubt about that!" said Reginald. "And," he continued, drawing his pipe from his pocket and lighting it, "I am here as once Nick was here. What a pity there is no one to represent the murdered diver and his assassin, the drunken, maddened pirate."
As he reflected thus he heard the bark of a dog a little distance off; a few moments later he heard another sound as though branches were being parted; presently a voice spoke to the dog, and then the foliage growing down to the river's bank was pushed aside, and a woman came out from that foliage and stood gazing at him.
"Who are you?" she asked. "And what do you want?"
From his cutter to the shore, thirty to forty feet off, he in return gazed upon her, though his surprise did not prevent his remembering he was a gentleman, and, from the distance, taking off his hat to her while he put away his pipe. She stood before him, surrounded by all that luxuriance of colour and tropical vegetation, a girl "something more than common tall," and of, perhaps, nearly twenty years of age. A girl dressed in a light cotton gown--a very West Indian robe, both in its plain quality and pattern--that hung loosely upon her, yet did not conceal the shapely form beneath. On her head she wore a large napping straw hat, but it was not at her hat, but at what was beneath it, that Reginald looked. Her features were beautiful--there is no other word but this simple one to describe them--her colouring that which is often found in these regions, but scarcely anywhere else; the eyes a dark, lustrous hazel, the eyebrows black, the hair, which hung down like a mane upon her back, golden, with a tinge of copper red in it.
"Who are you?" she asked again, though he noticed that her voice was not a harsh one, nor, in spite of the question, an angry one. "What do you require?"
"Pardon me," replied Reginald, still spellbound at her appearance. "Pardon me. I hope this is no intrusion. I am yachting in a small way about the islands here. And among other places that attracted my attention was this river. I trust my presence is not objectionable."
"No," the girl replied quietly. Then she said, "Do you belong to the islands, or are you English or American?"
"I am English," he answered. "A sailor in Her Majesty's service."
She paused a moment, as though, it seemed to him, scarce knowing what to say, then she spoke again.