A WELCOME PILOT. 



9 



yellow or white. Far in front of us, and as far as we could 

 see on either hand, stretched this chequered board — a, 

 sort of mariner's nightmare. 



The yacht had been slowed down to a mere crawl ; but 

 unconsciously we held our breath as here and there a 

 great black mass loomed up ahead and seemed to be 

 growing half way up to the siu-face. Time after time, 

 so transparent was the water that it looked any odds 

 that we must strike one of these forbidding masses, when, 

 as a matter of fact, they were many feet below our keel. 



Less than a mile from the anchorage, a small boat 

 manned by two negroes and a white man was seen to be 

 coming out to meet us. The white man turned out to be 

 an American, and a son of the owner of the island, which 

 for the first time we discovered to be private property. 

 Mr. A. was good enough to explain that we were a little 

 too far to the eastward of our proper course, which he 

 knew by heart. 



Might he offer to pilot us in ? 



Well, yes, thought our Captain, he rather might ; and 

 in a trice Mr. A. had scrambled nimbly up the side of the 

 yacht and up to the bridge, where, with a confidence bom 

 of several years' experience of every " stick and stone " on 

 the bottom, he gave his orders to the man at the 

 wheel and directed the pace of the yacht to be 

 increased. 



All the way in, and long after our anchor had dropped 

 with a sullen plunge to the sandy bottom of the little 

 bay, Mr. A. entertained us with an account of how he, 

 his father, mother, and a brother, were the only residents 

 (negro servants excepted) on the island, and of the sort of 

 " Swiss Family Robinson " life they led there, turning 

 their hands to almost any sort of job imaginable, from 

 healing fever-stricken castaways, who were once wrecked 

 upon the island, to building a house, milking a cow, 

 making a boat or a landing stage, or growing cocoa-nuts, 

 sugar-oane, tobacco or other crops. Also of how the 

 United States had now annexed the island (a thing which 



