"At this rate of progress," said Jenks to the girl, "they will not reach our house until daylight."
"I almost wish they were here," was the quiet reply. "I find this waiting and listening to be trying to the nerves."
They were lying on a number of ragged garments hastily spread on the ledge, and peering intently into the moonlit area of Prospect Park. The great rock itself was shrouded in somber shadows. Even if they stood up none could see them from the ground, so dense was the darkness enveloping them.
He turned slightly and took her hand. It was cool and moist. It no more trembled than his own.
"The Dyaks are far more scared than you," he murmured with a laugh. "Cruel and courageous as they are, they dare not face a spook."
"Then what a pity it is we cannot conjure up a ghost for their benefit! All the spirits I have ever read about were ridiculous. Why cannot one be useful occasionally?"
The question set him thinking. Unknown to the girl, the materials for a dramatic apparition were hidden amidst the bushes near the well. He cudgeled his brains to remember the stage effects of juvenile days; but these needed limelight, blue flares, mirrors, phosphorus.
The absurdity of hoping to devise any such accessories whilst perched on a ledge in a remote island—a larger reef of the thousands in the China Sea—tickled him.
"What is it?" asked Iris.
He repeated his list of missing stage properties. They had nothing to do but to wait, and people in the very crux and maelstrom of existence usually discuss trivial things.