It was no great surprise to them, I venture, though surprise I meant it to be. They had guessed something the night we came ashore, and seamen aren't as stupid as some take them for. Nevertheless, they picked up their ears at my words, and Peter Bligh, filling his pipe, slowly, said, after a bit:
"Yes, it wouldn't be for parlour games, captain!"
The others were too curious to put in their word, and so I went on:
"He's here for wreckage and the money it brings him. I'll leave it to you to say what's done to those that sailed the ships. There are words in this paper which make a man's blood run cold. If they are to be repeated, they shall be spoken where Edmond Czerny can hear them, and those that judge him. What we are concerned about at this moment is Ken's Island and its story. You've heard the old Frenchman, Clair-de-Lune, speak of sleep-time and sun-time. As God is in heaven, he spoke the truth!"
They none of them answered me. Down below us the sea shimmered in the morning light. We sat on a ledge a thousand feet above it, and, save for the lapping waves on the reef, not a sound of life, not even a bird on the wing, came nigh us. You could have heard a pin drop when I went on.
"Sleep-time and sun-time, is it fable or truth? Ruth Bellenden says its truth. I'll read you her words———"
Peter Bligh said, "Ah," and struck a match. Seth Barker, the carpenter, sat for all the world like a child, with his great mouth wide open and his eyes full of wonder. Dolly Venn was curled up at my feet like a dog. I opened the papers and began to read to them:
"On the 14th of August, three weeks after the ship brought us to Ken's Island, I was awakened at four o'clock in the morning by an alarm-bell ringing somewhere in the island. The old servant, she whom they called 'Mother Meg,' came into my room in great haste to tell me to get up. When I was dressed my husband entered and laughingly said that we must go on board the yacht at once. I was perplexed and a little cross about it; but when we were rowed out to the ship, I found that all the white people were leaving the island in boats and being rowed to those rocks which lie upon the northward side. Edmond tells me that there are dangerous seasons in this beautiful place, when the whole island is unfit for human habitation and all must leave it, sometimes for a week, sometimes for a month."
I put the paper down and turned another page of it.
"That, you see," said I, "is written on the 14th of August, before she knew the true story or what the dangerous time might mean. Passing on, I find another entry on September 21st, and that makes it clearer: