194 A NATURALIST ON DESERT ISLANDS. 



clean as a new sheet. Holy Mother ! how they crack 

 her along ! ! By the saints, though, they'll have the 

 sticks out of her. Look lads, look, she's making for 

 " The Brothers " — see her lee-deck all awash — surely they 

 must be hard pressed for it .... I rub my eyes and 

 stare across the sparkling sea through the dancing mirage. 

 Yes, there she is, sure enough ' ! A smother of creamy- 

 white foam streams from her fine-cut stem — a black 

 flag is fluttering wildly at the peak, and she heels over 

 with a press of white canvas, making short work of the 

 distance which separates her from the islands. 



Presently, as we strain our eyes across the sea, we see 

 her helm put up. Round comes her head right into the 

 wind — all her sails a-shiver — and she shoots on awhile, 

 towards a little cove under the lee of one of the islands. 



A dinghy is swung overboard. We can see the splash 

 it makes as it hits the water. Men are swarming to the 

 rails. They are dragging a heavy, nail-studded box. 

 They lower it over the side — others follow with picks 

 and shovels. Some bronze-faced ruffians in a strange 

 motley of many-coloured garments seize the oars. Some 

 one else, evidently someone to be respected and dreaded, 

 hghtly drops into the stem and takes the tiller. 



He steers for the little cove, where the swell gently 

 rises and falls against the rocks. There is no place 

 where they can beach the boat, so the men tumble out 

 and feverishly haul the box ashore. Laboriously it is 

 pulled up the sun-baked slabs of granite, all ahve with 

 iguanas and gannets. Sweating and growling at the 

 leaden weight, they clamber up, stumbling amongst the 

 loose rocks and cursing at the prickly growths of cactus. 

 At last they find the very place. Breathlessly they 

 begin to dig ; and while the hole grows larger and deeper, 

 the man who steered makes a careful plan of the sur- 

 roundings, measuring the distance this way and that to 

 prominent marks, which he jots down on a rough chart. 

 Soon the box is lowered into its resting place, the soil 

 is hurriedly shovelled back, and all traces of disturbance 



