"Three, please," St. George directed, for the pure joy of watching her hands. There were no tongs.
"Aren't the rest going to have some?" Olivia absently shared her attention, tinkling delicately about among the tea things. "Doesn't every one want a cup of tea?" she inquired loud enough for nobody to hear. St. George, shifting his shoulder from the rail, looked vaguely over the deck of The Aloha, sighed contentedly, and smiled back at her. No one else, it appeared, would have tea; and there was none to regret it.
St. George's cursory inspection had revealed the others variously absorbed, though they were now all agreed in breathing easily since Barnay, interlarding rational speech with Irishisms of thanksgiving, had announced five minutes before that the fires were up and that in half an hour The Aloha might weigh anchor. The only thing now left to desire was to slip clear of the shadow of the black reaches of Yaque, shouldering the blue.
Meanwhile, Antoinette and Amory sat in the comparative seclusion of the bow with their backs to the forward deck, and it was definitely manifest to every one how it would be with them, but every one was simply glad and dismissed the matter with that. Mr. Frothingham, in his steamer chair, looked like a soft collapsible tube of something; Bennietod, at ease upon the uncovered boards of the deck, was circumspectly having cheese sandwiches and wastefully shooting the ship's rockets into the red sunset, in general celebration; and Rollo, having taken occasion respectfully to submit to whomsoever it concerned that fact is ever stranger than fiction, had gone below. Mr. Otho Holland and Little Cawthorne—but their smiles were like different names for the same thing—were toasting each other in something light and dry and having a bouquet which Mr. Holland, who ought to know, compared favourably with certain vintages of 1000 B.C. In a hammock near them reclined Mrs. Medora Hastings, holding two kinds of smelling salts which invariably revived her simply by inducing the mental effort of deciding which was the better. Her hair, which was exceedingly pretty, now rippled becomingly about her flushed face and was guiltless of side-combs—she had lost them both down a chasm in that headlong flight from the cliff's summit, and they irrecoverably reposed in the bed of some brook of the Miocene period. And Mrs. Hastings, her hand in that of her brother, lay in utter silence, smiling up at him in serene content.
For King Otho of Yaque was turning his back upon his island domain for ever. In that hurried flight across the Eurychôrus among his distracted subjects, his resolution had been taken. Jarvo and Akko, the adieux to whom had been every one's sole regret in leaving the island, had miraculously found their way to the king and his party in their flight, and were despatched to Mount Khalak for such of their belongings as they could collect, and the island sovereign was well content.
"Ah well now," he had just observed, languidly surveying the tropical horizon through a cool glass of winking amber bubbles, "one must learn that to touch is far more delicate than to lift. It is more wonderful to have been the king of one moment than the ruler of many. It is better to have stood for an instant upon a rainbow than to have taken a morning walk through a field of clouds. The principle has long been understood, but few have had—shall I say the courage?—to practise it. Yet 'courage' is a term from-the-shoulder, and what I require is a word of finger-tips, over-tones, ultra-rays—a word for the few who understand that to leave a thing is more exquisite than to outwear it. It is by its very fineness circumscribed—a feminine virtue. Women understand it and keep it secret. I flatter myself that I have possessed the high moment, vanished against the noon. Ah, my dear fellow—" he added, lifting his glass to St. George's smile.
But little Cawthorne—all reality in his heliotrope outing and duck and grey curls—raised a characteristic plaint.
"Oh, but I've done it," he mournfully reviewed. "When'll I ever be in another island, in front of another vacated throne? Why didn't I move into the palace, and set up a natty, up-to-date little republic? I could have worn a crown as a matter of taste—what's the use of a democracy if you aren't free to wear a crown? And what kind of American am I, anyway, with this undeveloped taste for acquiring islands? If they ever find this out at the polls my vote'll be challenged. What?"
"Aw whee!" said Bennietod, intent upon a Roman candle, "wha' do you care, Mr. Cawt'orne? You don't hev to go back fer to be a child-slave to Chillingwort'. Me, I've gotta good call to jump overboard now an' be de sonny of a sea-horse, dead to rights!"
St. George looked at them all affectionately, unconscious that already the experience of the last three days was slipping back into the sheathing past, like a blade used. But he was dawningly aware, as he sat there at Olivia's feet in glorious content, that he was looking at them all with new eyes. It was as if he had found new names for them all; and until long afterward one does not know that these moments of bestowing new names mark the near breathing of the god.