"Escape! Where was I—Oh! I remember," said the hermit, awaking as if out of a dream "Well, I swam after the junk until it was out of sight, and then I swam on in silent despair until so completely exhausted that I felt consciousness leaving me. Then I knew that the end must be near and I felt almost glad; but when I began to sink, the natural desire to prolong life revived, and I struggled on. Just as my strength began a second time to fail, I struck against something. It was a dead cocoa-nut tree. I laid hold of it and clung to it all that night. Next morning I was picked up by some fishermen who were going to Telok Betong by the outer passage round Sebesi Island, and were willing to land me there. But as my business connections had been chiefly with the town of Anjer, I begged of them to land me on the island of Krakatoa. This they did, and it has been my home ever since. I have been there many years."
"Have you never seen or heard of your daughter since?" asked Nigel eagerly, and with deep sympathy.
"Never—I have travelled far and near, all over the archipelago; into the interior of the islands, great and small, but have failed to find her. I have long since felt that she must be dead—for—for she could not live with the monsters who stole her away."
A certain contraction of the mouth, as he said this, and a gleam of the eyes, suggested to Nigel that revenge was not yet dead within the hermit's breast, although it had been overcome.
"What was her name?" asked Nigel, willing to gain time to think how he ought to act, and being afraid of the effect that the sudden communication of the news might have on his friend.
"Winnie—darling Winnie—after her mother," said the hermit with deep pathos in his tone.
A feeling of disappointment came over our hero. Winnie bore not the most distant resemblance to Kathleen!
"Did you ever, during your search," asked Nigel slowly, "visit the Cocos-Keeling Islands?"
"Never. They are too far from where the attack on us was made."
"And you never heard of a gun-boat having captured a pirate junk and——"