CHAPTER XIV.

THE WATCHERS OF THE SEA.

"Maria vasta visens."

WATCHERS of the vague immeasurable sea are apt to grow despondent when, through long days and nights, no sail is seen. Our party on the Island of Hawks were not of this temper. The Troglodyte, having dwelt on the mystical island a mystical number of years, was in no hurry to leave it. Indeed, when he thought thereon, he grew melancholy, well aware that in no other island. should he find such rare beauty, such inexhaustible fertility, such absolute quietude.

"If I get back to England," reflected the Troglodyte, "I may become a baronet, with a

great estate. What estate could equal this island? What is the good of being a baronet? However, I suppose I must do it for the sake of Adam and Eve."

Adam and Eve themselves were quite satisfied with their position, and resented being put into rough clothing, which their father made of goatskins and the like, as he rightly thought that, if a ship reached the island, it would hardly do to put on board a couple of young nudities. They had outgrown their clothing long ago, and the Troglodyte did not think making more worth the trouble. To these wild youngsters, however, the trammels of dress were an abomination; only by threat of chastisement could they be induced to wear their rough habiliments. When they were beyond the paternal ken, they threw their new clothes aside, and rejoiced in freedom from restraint. These young barbarians show us the difference between barbarism and civilisation in its

crucial point. Barbarism is unclothed in mind and body; civilisation is clothed as to both-mentally by hypocrisy, corporally by fashion.

Harold Tachbrook was the most restless of the islanders. He, though quiet enough during his Australian sojourn, the sojourn of his own choice, was now eager to escape from his enforced imprisonment. He had a kind of calenture. He dreamt of the green fields and good dinners of his youth-of the orchards he had robbed, the trout he had caught, the birds' nests he had taken, the girls he had kissed. There is no place like England for boyhood's harmless sports. To be an English boy, wisely treated and in perfect health, is an amazingly fortunate position. George Canning once said, at an Eton dinner in London, "Whatever might be the success of after life, whatever gratifica-, tion of ambition might be realised, whatever triumphs might be realised, no one is ever so great a man as when he was a sixth-form boy at Eton." Canning was right. The boy

has no cares.

His ambitions are free from the dross which clings to most ambitions of manhood. He desires to be the best rower or cricketer-the best writer of classic verse or prose—the best mathematician; but these desires are wholly unconnected with the

after-thought of money. The glory of a great public school is, that it is a world without worldliness.

I am bound to say that the other two members of the party were not at all eager to leave the island. They had what Americans call a "good time." Both were rather ignorant in the scholastic sense; for Miranda had never been taught anything save by that German enthusiast, and Tom Jones had distinguished himself at school simply by reversing the natural order of things, and thrashing his ludimagister. However, scholastic guidance was in no wise necessary to make them very agreeable one to the other. Adam and Eve (I mean the primevals) could have had no education worth mentioning; it may be questioned whether it ever occurred to them that seventy pence were five and tenpence, or that chemises ought not to be spelt shimes. You see they had no weekly washing-list.

Watch was kept on the windy peak day after day, week after week; but never a white sail came that way, night after night, day after day. The Troglodyte began to fancy there was some sort of necromancy, since many a length

of days before ships had passed the island shore. As to Harold, he looked on ocean with a strange magnetical emotion; as if he could see beneath its water the quaint old village, the landlord's daughter, and his father amid old books shut fast, saying, "Sons run away, but books will last." But Tom and fair Miranda cared nought for the future, since they shared a perfectly happy life, and knew that each to the other was loyal and They lived and loved, and watched and waited-not at all in haste for the good ship fated to carry them off to England.

true.

Miranda and Tom Jones without a doubt passed pleasant hours where that queer white flag fluttered. A thousand pleasant things they talked about; their lips a thousand curious fancies uttered. Tom used to chaff-Miranda used to pout sometimes, while overhead the strong storm muttered. But lovers little care for change of weather, being alone upon a hill together.

These two were better off than all the rest. If Tom's watch came by day, Miranda passed her day beside him, no unwelcome guest. She sat and worked, and looked across the vast