I answered "Yes," though that was far from the truth, for what with watching through the night and thinking about the ship and little Ruth Bellenden's loneliness in this place of mystery, and far worse than mystery, I'd forgotten all about meal-times, and never once had asked myself where breakfast was to come from. But now the long faces of my shipmates brought me to a remembrance of it, and when little Dolly Venn cried, "Oh, captain, I am so hungry!" I began to realize what a parlous plight we were in and what a roundabout road we must tread to get out of it. Lucky for us, the old Frenchman, who had stood all this time like a statue gazing out over the desolate sea, now bobbed up again, good Samaritan that he was, and catching Master Dolly's complaint, he spoke of breakfast on his own account.
"Ah! you hungry, you thirst, messieurs; sailor-man always like that. Your ship gone? Never mind, he shall come back again, to-day, to-morrow, one, two, three day—pray God it be not longer, shipmate, pray God!"
A picturesque old figure standing there.
I thought him a fine, picturesque old figure, standing there on the headland with his long hair streaming in the wind like a woman's, and his brawny arms outstretched as though he would call the ship back to us from the lonely ocean. Truth to tell, the place was one to fill any man with awe. Far as the eye could see, the great waste was white with the foam of its breaking seas; the headland itself stood up a thousand feet like some mighty fortress commanding all the deep. Far below us were the green valleys of the island, the woods we had raced through last night; pastures with little white houses dotted about on them; the bungalow itself wherein Ruth Bellenden lived. No picture from the gallery of a high tower could have been more beautiful than that strange land with the wild reefs lying about it and the rollers cascading over them, and the black glens above which we stood, and the great circle of the water like some measureless basin which the whole earth bounded. I did not wonder that old Clair-de-Lune was silent when he looked down upon a scene so grand. It seemed a crime to speak of food and drink in such a place; and yet it was of these that Peter Bligh must go on talking.
"We'll do the prayin', shipmate, if you'll do the cookin'," cried he, hopefully; "as for that—you speak like a wise man. 'Tis wonderful easy to pray on a full stomach! There isn't a hunger or a thirst this side of 'Frisco which I would not pray out of this same island if you'll be pleased to bring 'em along. Weigh anchor, my man," says he, "and we'll pipe down to dinner."
Well, the old man laughed at his manner of putting it, and, without further ado, we all went down to the bird's nest in the hollow, and there we lighted a fire in the shelter of the pit, and old Clair-de-Lune going away in search of rations, he returned presently with victuals enough to feed a missionary, and more than that, as pretty a trio to serve them as any seaman could hope for. For what should happen but that the three young girls we'd seen yesterday in the woods came romping up the hill together; and one bringing a great can for the coffee, and another a basket of luscious fruit, and a third some new-made bread and biscuit—they ran down the ladder to us and began to talk in their pretty language, and now and then in English which did not need much understanding.
"I am Rosamunda," says one.
And the second, she says: