278 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



casting into the broad pool 'that rose over the 

 sandy beach. 



Smoothly the days wheeled by in a procession of 

 soft winds, hui'rying rain-clouds, moonless or silver 

 nights, flowing into unregarded weeks and months 

 of perpetual summer. The crash and suck of break- 

 ers, the rattling song of the wind in the palm-trees, 

 familiarly became a part of silence, and time was 

 counted, not by dates, but by events, — the day the 

 boat broke loose, the last big rain, or the evening 

 that a light glimmered on the horizon. When 

 treasure-hunters came, there was the news of the 

 world to hear, and gifts to exchange, flour and 

 sugar for fresh pork and coconuts, and always the 

 game of twenty questions that the newcomers 

 played in their attempts to extract useful points 

 from the oldest resident of Treasure Island. 



Not all the visitors conducted themselves with 

 courtesy. In 1896, while Gissler was absent in 

 Costa Rica, renewing his arrangement with the 

 government, a British warship dropped anchor at 

 Cocos. She was commanded by a somewhat im- 

 petuous Irishman, and I will follow the cautious 

 example of another writer in calling him Captain 

 Shrapnel. He had a roimantic soul but bad man- 

 ners; he landed three hundred blue-jackets, in- 

 formed Mrs. Gissler (who was alone except for 

 two peons ) that she was not to leave the immediate 

 vicinity of her house, and disregarding her pro- 

 tests that this side of the island was her husband's 

 property, turned his men loose in a three-day orgy 

 of blasting and drilling in search of the loot of the 



