"That is true," said Cynthia. "Very well, then, I promise. It's a pretty toy. I think I'll give it to Aunt Mary 'Zekel for a curiosity when I get home."
My pages will be too full if I try to set down each time the Bo's'n brought fruit in from the forest, or each time that I went along the beach and gathered oysters from their homes upon the mangrove roots. Let it suffice that I say here that the forest and the sea yielded us food. If not luxurious food, still enough to support life, and that, with the fresh water from the spring below the cliff, from which we were now not cut off, and the rum which we gathered up later from the great bowl in the flagons and cups that we appropriated to our use, we managed to have eatables and drinkables enough while we remained in the cave.
We were busy all that day in settling ourselves in our permanent abode. We cut branches and stripped the leaves from them, looked through them with care to see that there was no dangerous insect hidden beneath their shining green, and, piling the sticks and leaves against the inner wall, we made for ourselves beds, which, if not quite as comfortable as the bunks on board the old Yankee, still were better than we had hoped to find when we were cast away.
I had not seen Cynthia since I had discovered the secret of the locket. The Captain went sometimes to her chamber, and always brought the word that she could not be awakened. I was more than anxious, but I had no rights that others would recognise, and I did not dare suggest what I knew the Skipper would not approve. I should have liked to carry the girl down the hill, and place her on the beach in the shade of the great trees and in sight of the sea, where the cool, fresh trade wind could blow across her face; but the Skipper looked at me with so much apparent indignation at my interference, when I hinted at a supposititious case of the kind, that I held my peace.
We all went to rest early. The Bo's'n had made a most refreshing brew of coffee, and, after we drank it, we laid ourselves down, hoping at last for a solid night of rest and sleep.
We were talking from one bed to the other as men—and they say women—will in those drowsy hours.
"I haven't seen the Minion to-day," said I.
"Nor I. The last I saw of the little devil was when I told him to put out the lamp in the cave."
"He'll come soon enough to bother us," said I.
Just then there was a step upon the floor, and Cynthia again emerged from between the pillars. She walked as she had before.