"I do not despise them," she said; "of course every one knows that we are descended from those of Tahiti. I only say that they are not fit companions for white men—I mean of educated white men who in the end become as bad as they are—even worse—much worse. But tell me about your being ill. And who tended you? Was it a woman?"
"I will tell you all about it to-morrow if you will walk with me and show me some of the scenery of this beautiful island of yours. But it is a long story, and it is too late to begin to-night."
"I should like it above all things," she said frankly, "though you must have seen so many grand places in your roamings that our poor landscapes will hardly interest you."
"Much depends on the guide," I said, as I gazed admiringly at her eloquent countenance.
"I know that," she answered, meeting my too ardent gaze with perfect unconsciousness of any hidden meaning. "They tell me I am the best guide on the island, and indeed I should be, for my father and I were never tired of exploring and finding out traces of the old occupation by the Sydney Government, and many curious discoveries we made. So I will come here after breakfast to-morrow."
She was true to her appointment, and then commenced a series of delightful rambles which, perhaps, I more truly enjoyed than many later and more pretentious travels.
In despite of Miranda's depreciation of her lovely isle we found endless excuses for interest and admiration. It was truly a wonderful little "kingdom by the sea." Scraped along the side of a hill would be one of the beautiful roads constructed by the forced labour of the convicts which at one time almost filled the island. Rising from the valley slope were gigantic ferns, broad-leaved palms, lemons, oranges, guavas, all originally imported, but now flourishing in the wildest luxuriance in the rich soil and semi-tropical climate; while above all, stately and columnar, rose the great Araucaria peculiar to the island—the Norfolk Island pine of the colonists.
Hand in hand we roamed together through this Eden amid the main, as though our great progenitors had again been transplanted to this wondrous wild—a latter day Adam, by whose side smiled a sinless Eve—pure as her prototype, and yet informed of much of the lore which men had wrested from the rolling ages. Together we explored the gloomy corridors and echoing halls of the ruinous prison houses—once the dark abodes of sorrow, torment, and despair unutterable.
Miranda shuddered at the thought that these dismal cells and courtyards had echoed to the cries of criminals under the lash—to the clanking of chains—had even witnessed the death penalty inflicted on the murderer and the mutineer.
Mute and terrible witnesses were they to the guilt to which human nature may descend—to the abysmal depths of despair into which the felon and the outcast may be hurled, when, hopeless of help from God or man, he abandons himself to all the baser instincts.