Our costume was now brought into harmony with our surroundings. For myself, garbed in goatskin with the hair outside, with alligator sandals on my feet and with whiskers at least six inches long, I have no doubt that I resembled the beau ideal of a cave man. With the open-air life a new agility seemed to have come into my limbs. With a single leap in my alligator sandals I was enabled to spring into a coco-nut tree.
As for Edith Croyden, I can only say that as she stood beside me on the beach in her suit of black goatskin (she had chosen the black spots) there were times when I felt like seizing her in the frenzy of my passion and hurling her into the sea. Fur always acts on me just like that.
It was at the opening of the fifth week of our life upon the island that a new and more surprising turn was given to our adventure. It arose out of a certain curiosity, harmless enough, on Edith Croyden's part. "Mr. Borus," she said one morning, "I should like so much to see the rest of our island. Can we?"
"Alas, Miss Croyden," I said, "I fear that there is but little to see. Our island, so far as I can judge, is merely one of the uninhabited keys of the West Indies. It is nothing but rock and sand and scrub. There is no life upon it. I fear," I added, speaking as jauntily as I could, "that unless we are taken off it we are destined to stay on it."
"Still I should like to see it," she persisted.
"Come on, then," I answered, "if you are good for a climb we can take a look over the ridge of rocks where I went up on the first day."
We made our way across the sand of the beach, among the rocks and through the close matted scrub, beyond which an eminence of rugged boulders shut out the further view.
Making our way to the top of this we obtained a wide look over the sea. The island stretched away to a considerable distance to the eastward, widening as it went, the complete view of it being shut off by similar and higher ridges of rock.
But it was the nearer view, the foreground, that at once arrested our attention. Edith seized my arm. "Look, oh, look!" she said.
Down just below us on the right hand was a similar beach to the one that we had left. A rude hut had been erected on it and various articles lay strewn about.