The Girl Crusoes: A Story of the South Seas

by Mrs. Herbert Strang

At San Francisco Captain Barton chartered a steamer. He never spoke of the pang this must have cost him. Those who knew the old man guessed how bitterly he felt the necessity, at the close of his career, of thus tacitly admitting the superiority of steam over sails.

The steamer had made for Maku's island, Captain Barton hoping to enlist the services of Mr. Corke and the people in the search for his nieces. Learning on his arrival that Maku had disappeared, and that the missionary had been carried away to the sacred island, he at once started to rescue his friend. He was distressed at the interruption of his primary quest, but when Mr. Corke's whereabouts was a certainty, while his nieces' very existence was doubtful, he felt that the nearer duty must be accomplished first. His delight at being able to rescue the girls, his friend, and the old chief at the same time may be imagined.

His action on the island was summary. On learning the state of affairs, he sent the steamer along the shore to the spot where the native canoes were beached, drove off the infuriated natives with a warning shot from his brass gun, and had the canoes towed out to sea. He said he did not hold with revolutions, and meant to reinstate Maku in his old chiefdom. Since those of his disaffected subjects who had come to the island were the mystery men and their principal supporters, he decided to leave them there with their new chief, having learnt that they would have no difficulty in finding sustenance. He would carry back Maku and Fangati with the missionary to their island, and to ensure that they should not be molested by the revolutionaries he determined to take the canoes in tow, and so leave them without the means of crossing the sea.

The girls left the scene of their adventures without regret. Looking back upon their life there, they acknowledged that it had been on the whole happy, and their terrors seemed trifling now that they were free from them. Tommy did not fail to seek for her parrot, which she found disconsolate in the boat, and which, she declared, spoke to her for the first and last time in its life when she took it up and perched it on her shoulder. She was very reluctant to part with Fangati, and tried to persuade her uncle to take her back to England with them; but the old man assured her that the girl was happier in her own land, and put an end to the subsequent discussion with one of his crusted aphorisms.

There is a little town in Surrey which, though not far from London, preserves a good deal of the charm of the country. Its roads are shaded with unlopped trees; its houses lie amid pleasant gardens; and being away from the main routes it is not devastated by motor cars.

In the front garden of one of the houses rises a tall white mast, complete with yards and halyards. Over the entrance stands the model of a full-rigged barque. In the hall a white parrot spends a placid but noisy existence. These emblems of the nautical life are confined to the front of the house; at the back there is a tennis lawn, a well-kept flower garden, with glass-houses, and an orchard.

Captain Barton was advised to take this house by his lawyer, who wished to let it for a client. A tramp through Deptford and Rotherhithe soon convinced him that, however well suited those riverside suburbs may have been to seafaring men in the days of Queen Bess, they did not offer much attraction nowadays to a retired mariner with three nieces. And having assured himself that the country town in question had an excellent high school for girls, with a practising school attached, he followed his lawyer's advice—for once in a way, as he said.

Elizabeth keeps house for him, spending a good deal of time in the garden. She is assisted there by Dan Whiddon, who does not grow very fast, although the Captain makes him climb the mast once a day for the sake of stretching his limbs. Mary is learning how to teach, and Tommy is in the fifth form at school, champion in tennis, and a dashing forward in the hockey team. Her first reports made her uncle screw up his mouth, and rub his bald pate, and ask Elizabeth what on earth was to be done with a minx like that. "Has good abilities, but lacks application," he quoted. "Much too talkative. Has lost too many conduct marks this term." Elizabeth begged him to be patient, assuring him that Tommy would turn out quite well in time. And as the same mistresses who penned the above remarks are all wonderfully fond of Tommy, and she is the most popular girl in the school, it is evident that she has at least one most enviable quality, the power of winning friends.

A visitor often comes to the house, at whose appearance Captain Barton retires to his den and grumps and growls over his beloved pipe. The young electrical engineer whom the girls had met in Valparaiso will certainly get on in the world, if dogged persistence has its reward. Though they had then been unable to give him any address, and had held no communication with him since, they had not been settled more than a week before he called. "The impudence of the fellow!" said Captain Barton inwardly, when Elizabeth introduced the visitor. Through the wreaths of smoke from his pipe the worthy Captain sees visions of Elizabeth keeping house for some one else, and the poor man, I fear it must be confessed, is jealous. Tommy looks on with a humorous twinkle in her eye.

"Poor old Nunky!" she thinks. "He's wondering what in the world he'll do when Bess is married, and Mary's away teaching, and he's left to the tender mercies of Me!"