There was something exasperating, too, in being obliged, owing to the size of the boat, to sit so close to Winnie without having a right to touch her hand! Who has not experienced this, and felt himself to be a very hero of self-denial in the circumstances?
"Mos' awrful hot!" remarked Moses, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.
"You hot!" said Nigel in surprise. "I thought nothing on earth could be too hot for you."
"Dat's your ignerance," returned Moses calmly. "Us niggers, you see, ought to suffer more fro' heat dan you whites."
"How so?"
"Why, don't your flossiphers say dat black am better dan white for 'tractin' heat, an' ain't our skins black? I wish we'd bin' born white as chalk. I say, Massa Nadgel, seems to me dat dere's not much left ob Krakatoa."
They had approached near enough to the island by that time to perceive that wonderful changes had indeed taken place, and Van der Kemp, who had been for some time silently absorbed in contemplation, at last turned to his daughter and said—
"I had feared at first, Winnie, that my old home had been blown entirely away, but I see now that the Peak of Rakata still stands, so perhaps I may yet show you the cave in which I have spent so many years."
"But why did you go to live in such a strange place, dear father?" asked the girl, laying her hand lovingly on the hermit's arm.
Van der Kemp did not reply at once. He gazed in his child's face with an increase of that absent air and far-away look which Nigel, ever since he met him, had observed as one of his characteristics. At this time an anxious thought crossed him,—that perhaps the blows which his friend had received on his head when he was thrown on the deck of the Sunshine might have injured his brain.