THE ISLAND'S OWNER.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" asked Reginald, confronting the intruder; while, as he spoke, he observed that the coarse and scanty clothes in which he was clad were drenched with more water than even the heavens could have poured on him.
He was a man of great bulk, young as himself, and with a mass of reddish-yellow hair that hung about his face, matted and dishevelled from the wet in which it was soaked; and as he advanced into the room the water dripped off him on to the floor.
"Want!" he replied, "want! What should a man want in his own house but rest and comfort after a storm? Master, this is my house! I had best ask what you want here? And at night--alone with my sister."
Yet he did not pause for an answer, but going up to where that sister lay back in the swoon that had overcome her, he shook her roughly by the shoulder and called out--
"Come, get over your fit. I have bad news for you."
"Be a little more gentle with her!" Reginald exclaimed. "We can bring her to in a better manner than that;" and as he spoke he went to the spirit flask he had brought up from the yacht, and moistened her lips with some of the whisky, and bathed her forehead with water from one of the calabashes.
"What the devil is the matter with the girl?" asked her brother. "She has never been used to indulging in such weaknesses--what does it mean?"
"It means," the other replied, "that the storm has frightened her."
"Bah! she has seen plenty of them since she was born. We are used to storms here."