“What if this should prove to be a small, abandoned island,” he said aloud, “like Robinson Crusoe’s?”
“What if it should?” Doris breathed.
What indeed? They were young, romantic. The sea lay before them. Behind them was the island. The thrilling possibilities of it all set their blood racing. Animal trails no human foot has trod. Jungles no man has explored. Strange butterflies and flowers of a species no man has known. Ruins perhaps of a long forgotten race or of some ancient pirate’s hiding place. All these possibilities and more lay before them.
There was food. Wild bananas, cocoanuts, bread fruit, fish in the streams and the sea, and birds so tame they might almost be caught with the naked hand.
As they stood there day-dreaming, the sea, the air, the very palm tops appeared to listen to their thoughts; so calm and still it was; such a Sabbath hush there was over all.
And then, crashing into their thoughts, wrecking the silence, came a laugh, the loud, prolonged laugh of a black man. There could be no mistaking it. No white man, certainly no Oriental, could laugh like that.
The boy and girl started, then stood for ten seconds looking into one another’s eyes. After that, because the laugh was contagious, they too burst forth into merry peals of laughter.
“There are people on the island,” said Johnny. “A man seldom laughs when he is alone. Never like that.”
“Johnny,” said Doris, “do cannibals and pirates laugh?”
“I doubt it,” said Johnny. “Surely not that way.”