Volume 1820
Georges Dodds'
The Ape-Man: his Kith and Kin
A collection of texts which prepared the advent of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Presents
http://www.erbzine.com/mag18/eden.htm

Author(s)

Link to Tarzan of the Apes

• Personal research

Edition(s) used

• C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne. 1892. The New Eden. London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co.

From personal collection.
• Illustrations to come

Modifications to the text

• Chapter titles moved to Table of Contents

The time was night, but electric lamps filled the place with a steady glow of light.

There came a knock at the door.

"Enter."

The door-handle turned, and the yacht's sailing-master stepped inside.

"Your highness," he said, "we are there. I have had the engines slowed down to half speed, so as just to give us steerage way."

"You have not run into sight of the island?"

"The loom of the mid-peak can just be seen from the foretop- gallant yard; but from land we should be invisible."

"That is well. Call away the boat at once, and I will be on deck in ten minutes. Stay a minute." The sailing-master had saluted, and was turning to leave the cabin. "You have explained to the officer in charge of the boat how to find that creek which we noted before? There is too much at stake here, for me to rely upon my own memory about such matters."

"With permission, your highness, I shall accompany you myself."

"Ah, perhaps that is the best plan. And you have impressed upon the men the necessity for keeping our presence absolutely hidden?"

"They understand it thoroughly."

"Repeat your warning, captain, and promise them a heavy douceur to help their caution. If our visit is noticed, my experiment will be in great part spoiled, and my life will not be long enough to commence a second from the beginning."

"I will see that your highness has no reason to fear on that score."

"And about provisions, captain?"

"According to orders, I have victualled the boat for fourteen days."

" Add more; make it twenty. My present intention is to spend a week on each island; but delays may occur. We may be held there by storms, and I cannot have the yacht standing in through the reef; to take us off."

"Your highness need have no fear of that. The trade-winds are regular now. There is no reason to expect a storm at this time of year."

"Nevertheless," returned the other, "it is my wish to be prepared even for the unexpected."

"I will victual the boat for twenty days," said the sailing- master, and then withdrew.

The Archduke turned again to his writing-table, and collecting the papers with which it was strewn, packed them away methodically, closed the lid upon them, and locked it. Then he put on a cap and a long military coat, and went up on deck. The crew had just swung a pair of boat-davits outboard, and were standing by the tackles ready to lower at word of command.

The officer who was to be left in charge came up and saluted.

"Any further orders, your highness?"

"None but what the captain will have given you; but let me repeat them. You are to cruise away in any direction you think fit for a fortnight, and then to return here and stand on and off, just out of sight from this group of islands. Meanwhile you are to speak no vessel if you can avoid it. We may be detained on the islands longer than we anticipate, and if so you must wait for us as long as your provisions hold out. But under no circumstances are you to come in and look for us. Remember that. I had rather wait a couple of years before rejoining the yacht than have her sighted by those who are inside that barrier reef."

"Your highness shall be obeyed to the letter."

Meanwhile the boat, a strongly- built whaler, had been lowered, and brought alongside the accommodation ladder. The Archduke went down and took his seat in the stern-sheets beside the sailing master, who gave the order to cast off, and soon she was leaving the steamer under the impulse of four strongly-driven oars.

In half an hour the captain blew out the lamp which was illuminating the card of the boat compass, and pointed to a small dark blot on the horizon.

"That," he said, "is the mountain summit of the larger island. We shall rise the reef in another fifty minutes, and be through the opening and snugly moored in the old bushy creek in less than three hours."

The Archduke nodded, but made no verbal reply, and the boat went on through the warm night, the silence being broken only by the "cheep" of the rowlocks, and the gentle splashings and ripples of the water.

Fifteen days had passed, and the outline of that central peak was again the only land which stood out against the dark horizon. This time the whale-boat was leaving it. She was standing out to sea, The Archduke was sitting in the stern as before. His eyes were fixed upon the floor-gratings. He paid no attention to what was going on around him.

From time to time the sailing- master stood up on the stern-thwart, and scanned the seaward horizon. The night hour, passed away without showing him the thing he sought; but soon after dawn his scrutiny was rewarded, and sinking back to his seat, he took a glance at the compass, and bade the four oarsmen "give way."

"We shall be on board under the hour, with luck, your highness" he observed.

A nod was the only reply, and the sailing-master did not venture to intrude upon his employer's reverie until the yacht had them all once more on board, and the whale-boat had been run up to davits. Then, with some hesitation, he stepped across the white deck-planks and inquired where he was to shape a course for next.

"Home, captain, and by the straightest track you can take."

"Then your highness's experiment is ended? I trust it was successful."

"It is not ended, captain. The developments I hoped to see have not yet taken place. My visit was premature. They have not passed the plant-stage yet. One is a sturdy tree; the other a pretty flower: nothing more."

"But will they ever be anything more?"

"Time will prove: time alone. I may see it, or I may not. But still I firmly believe that time will witness their further evolution."

There was a silence for some minutes, broken only by the noises of shipboard, and then the sailing-master spoke a word or two, stammered, hesitated.

"You may speak freely, captain."

"Then if your highness will pardon the question, I should like to ask if you do not think the experiment somewhat of a cruel one?"

The tired-faced student turned round and smiled wearily.

"I wish I could change places, mentally and physically, with either of them, and take the risks. If we are both alive captain, to come back after the elapse of another decade, you will agree with me. You shake your head. Well, it cannot be decided now; but mark these words, and see if I am not a true prophet."

It was wonderfully hot. The heavy waves of heat from above bore down on one's head with sullen remorseless force, and the reflected glare from the water burnt like the glow from white-hot metal. The trade-wind was blowing, of course. That was an institution the islands had never known the lack of. But the tradewind under the mid-day sun was too warm to be very refreshing. There was a suggestion of cool in the crumbling thunder of the rollers as they ripped themselves to pieces on the coral reef; and the hoary heads of the surges, and the white spume flakes were tantalizingly like snow. But the suggestion was not strong enough to be refreshing. The fierce radiance above swamped it at birth.

Beyond the narrow strip of glaring, white strand which fringed the shore of the island close by, were the varied greens of a rank tropical vegetation which covered everything. Above them hung a thin blue veil of tenuous mist, which hinted at heat of a slightly different kind to the dry burn which scorched the sea. It was a sweltering warmth of the vapour bath sort which is easy to be borne if the pores of the skin act normally, and which is on the whole not unpleasant.

And the rulers and people of this quiet sunny region, what of them? On the restless ocean beyond the line of reefs not a sign of human life or workmanship was to be seen; and the smooth lagoon within those stony barriers was similarly void, unless one chose to look upon a forked log covered by a few rushes as a craft not of Nature's building alone. That the wood was dead and decayed, and had been broken adrift by the wind and its own weight, was evident; and it might be allowed that the rushes had straddled themselves across it without a lift from human fingers. Such rafts are daily to be seen on the rivers and coasts of an untouched country. But this crude bark was bearing a cargo. On the reeds were lying some eight or ten small fish of different genera, simply executed by having had their heads bitten off. Separately, each of these items might have been accounted for in various ways; but there is only one animal in the scheme of creation (as known to us at present) capable of performing all the items of the combination - and that is man.

Still, as I said, the lagoon was deserted. There was no man in sight. And yet the dead fish were moist-scaled, and limp; which, taking into account the fierce heat of the sun-rays pouring down upon them, showed that they could not have been out of water more than forty minutes at the longest.

The matter was puzzling, but there was other evidence which gave a vague hint at the truth. Hovering and sweeping through the air some sixty feet above the raft was a large strong-winged bird. It was a fish-hawk, by instinct anxious to steal, and yet apparently fearing to. His keen poacher's eye evidently saw some guardian of the treasure who was invisible to a less favoured sight, and his former experience warned him that robberies of this sort were apt to be dangerous.

Presently the fish-hawk gave an angry scream, and swooped away to seaward in search of other prey. It was useless for him, to wait any longer. A shadowy shape was darting up through the clear green water near the raft, which consolidated as it rose, and in a moment or two broke out upon the surface.

It was Adam, returning from his hunting-grounds.

In no wise distressed by his six-minute dive, the new-comer leisurely inhaled a fresh breath, added a double handful of shell-fish to the store of food already collected, and then cast his eye over the whole as though making a mental calculation. Appaently he thought there was sufficient, for swimming round to the further side of the raft, he placed on it the pointed stick which served him as a defensive weapon against sharks, and commenced pushing the conveyance slowly towards the land.

As his fishing operations had been conducted within fifty yards of the beach, he had not far to go; and quickly getting into sounding, dropped his legs and waded ashore, carrying the raft with him, and depositing it safely high and dry. Then adjusting his toilette with a simple shake, he sat down there and then to devour his meal.

He was very seal-like in his amphibious existence at that date.

After having eaten his fill, which he preferred to partake of before the sun's rays dried and tainted it, Adam got up, stretched himself, and began to walk homewards.

It was difficult to guess his exact age, for a man who has never known society differs from others of his species who have had their gregarious instincts satisfied; but from one thing and another, one might have put him down as being somewhere between twenty and. twenty-three. His skin was a ruddy- brown, save at the back of the neck, where a cascade of black hair warded. off the sun's rays, and kept the flesh ivory-white under its thick shelter. His face was a strong one in mould, though its expression. was slightly vacuous; and his form was tall and well- proportioned, though his shoulders were bent, and his gait was slouching.

Adam swung his hands by his side as he shambled along, and whistled to himself a soft vague tune that was not without a certain barbaric tunefulness. He had filled his belly, and so was contented. When he reached his headquarters, he would be more contented still. His residence was only figuratively a "home." It could not have been called a house of any sort. The climate was mild, and shelter was not a necessity. He might just as well have camped out wherever he happened to be. But Adam preferred to go home when the business of the day was over; the why and wherefore he should do so being unknown to him. At that period of his career he did not puzzle himself with useless questions: in fact, he never set himself mental problems of any kind. A certain animal instinct guided him to a limited extent, and he did not know enough to want anything beyond what instinct deigned to teach him.

Not having far to go, he soon reached his destination. It was a shallow concavity in a low bare cliff. Adam was a cave-dweller - at least in theory; for such a hollow could scarcely be dignified by the name of cave - thereby showing that his intelligence had leaped back over the generations, and drawn from its prim‘val ancestry. The furniture of his abode was simple. It consisted solely in a heap of dead dry leaves, upon which be could lie during the day, or amid which he could burrow if his naked body was chilled with the damp mists of night. The charms of exertion, for exertion's sake, were unknown to him; and so, as the day's fishing was a matter which was soon completed; the leafy couch supported him for the greater part of his time. And Adam conceived it to be all he needed, for he was a simple-minded man then, and his wants were few. Indeed, his existence at this epoch was one which many men, cast in other stations of life, would give their all to enjoy. He had no thoughs, no troubles, no worries. His greatest ill was a mild stomach- ache, and he never contracted even that trifling ailment otherwise than deliberately. Food was to him food, and as a rule it was nothing else. The exception was a fish with red fins and a back vari-coloured as the sunset. It had a delicate piquant flavour which tickled his palate. It was his one dainty. Occasionally, when the mood seized him, he indulged in a surfeit of this many hued dish. He had a foreknowledge of the consequences, and paid his penalty with stoical resignation. The feast was quite worth the trifling charge for candles. His mind evolved further later on, but at that period this was its highest effort.

Adam's brain had never received any training, and consequently most of its powers were absolutely dormant. Memory, for instance, was almost an unknown power to him, simply because he never had occasion to exercise it. Landmarks in his history were few, and he vegetated on from day to day without counting the months that passed. He did not know in the least how long he had lived on the island. He could not have told if he had been born there. Indeed it never occurred to him that he had been born at all. How should it have done?

He hadn't even propounded to himself Topsy's "growing" hypothesis. He was very ignorant.

Of course birth was constantly taking place around him. The fish spawned; the birds hatched their eggs; the seed-germs sprang into plants with tropical quickness. But man must have been personally fed on the lore of many generations before he can make the proper deductions from facts like these; and Adam was no trained observer. All this was as nothing to him. he saw it not.

As to how he came on the island, he had not the remotest, dimmest recollection. And the mists which swallowed up his past surged very closely on the mild sunshine of his present. With him, sufficient for the day was the food and rest thereof.

Adam might have been the first man: he might have been the only member of his species. But he did not know it. He did not even know he was a man at all. He was conscious of hunger, heat, and cold, and of a danger from sharks; and that was all. Beyond this, at that time, thoughts did not disturb or interest him. His mind was a blank, whose colourless magnitude it is difficult to conceive, and almost impossible to explain.

Picture him, after the short hour's labour for the day was done, lying on his heap of leaves, with head pillowed on his clasped hands, whistling dreamily, vaguely. Warm, comfortable, well-fed, he was passing the hours with eyes closed, and mind and body at perfect rest. He was autocrat of his world, a pleasant smiling genial world which gave him food almost for the asking. His subjects demanded nothing of him. He sighed for no companionship, knowing not what companionship was. If we are cynical, and take happiness as being freedom from pain, we must call his existence an ideal one.

In one especial instance, a change of this kind from his general routine helped him to make a discovery; and as the face of his life was utterly transformed thereby, it is worthy of particular detail.

The thing of course centred on the chase, and was indeed the outcome of that natural instinct which teaches all sentient animals to avoid the pursuer. Till Adam came there had been a perpetual close season for the fishing in the lagoon, ever since the coral wall crept up from the deep and enclosed it. His rights, it is true, were invaded by the gannets and other sea-fowl, by the dolphins and the sharks; but their poaching did not amount to much, for the preserves re-stocked themselves very rapidly, and, save for them, he had the whole to himself: but, as with other coverts, the game grew wild if too much disturbed. At least the winged portion - the fish - did; the ground game - mollusca - being less scary. But since it was in the finny tribes that Adam's stomach delighted, he found it was advisable to change his hunting- ground as much as possible every day, a piece of lore which it does not take a great of intelligence to arrive at.

This he did mechanically, and, taking the various beats in rotation, worked methodically from east to west, and began afresh at the eastern extremity again about once a month.

The only point where there was any difficulty about the work was at the western end. Here there was a submerged rock lying off in the lagoon; and between it and the shore, which was steep-to, a current ran at some four and a half knots to the hour. Adam had felt its influence more than once, and had had two or three hardish swims to get back to a landing place; for from time to time his sievelike memory would fail him, and he embarked his fortunes from the dangerous spot without a thought of the race which swept it.

On the occasion in question he had swum leisurely out, never looking backwards at the shore, and consequently was wholly unconscious of his rapid drift to westward. His captures were not rapid ones that day; and so, whilst he made many dives, the reap of spoil on the raft grew but slowly. And in the end, when he had gleaned a sufficiency, and turned to go up to his landing- place, he found he could not stem the current.

He had swum a goodish time before arriving at this conclusion, and had wearied himself considerably; but finding at last that it was of no use struggling further, he turned over on his back, used the little raft as a pillow, and floated resignedly with the stream. The steep rocks beside him had no foreshore; and next to them came a length of mangrove swamp, where landing was equally impossible. He must go round to the tail of the island, whither he now dimly recollected to have been previously.

Yes, he had put in there once before, no, more than once - in fact, several times; and there was an eddy which set one on to a smooth shelving beach of clayey coral sand. How a suggestion does remind one of a chain of circumstances! All he had to do was to float down there philosophically. So he did it whistling gently, and keeping a look-out for any black triangular fin which might be taking a cruise along the surface in his direction. For the devil, without whom an Eden would be incomplete, here assumed the form of a shark; or rather of many sharks, for his name was legion. Adam, however, did not fear the sharks. He was watchful, and when one attacked him, he resisted it and crammed a pointed stick vertically between its well-toothed jaws; whereupon it would flee from him, and in the course of a few days die in much torment, thereby not only receiving punishment itself, but affording a salutary lesson to its brethren. However, wise sharks only attack men in water where men are not able to take care of themselves; and so Adam's promptitude of action on former occasions had instilled a wholesome fear into the resident sharks of his immediate neighbourhood, it was seldom now that his journeyings were interrupted.

Adam's voyage was a pleasant one. His hands dangled idly; his long hair floated around him like a halo of fine seaweed. The warm tropical brine cradled him as comfortably as his couch of leaves could have done, and the current bore him smoothly along. It was as easy a mode of conveyance as he could have wished for, and though he was an involuntary traveller, it never struck him that this was cause for regret. He was empty-minded enough to accept it as being all in the day's work.

Accurately to the moment set down in Nature's time-table, the journey came to an end; and the passenger was delivered on the sloping beach, his destination. He scrambled above the water-line, shook his hair back over his shoulders, and sat down to eat; devouring his whole catch, not because he wanted it, but because it was there - a conclusive reason to an aboriginal.

Then he looked around him. He didn't remember the spot in the slightest, although he bad been there before; but instinct told him that as the shore-route was barred by cliff and mangrove swamp, the only homeward track lay over a high spur jutting from the island's central eminence. So he dipped his lips into a stream that trickled over the sands, and then setting off, entered the jungle of dense rich undergrowth, and was soon pressing a path through the hot moist gloom of a virgin forest. He passed clumps of banana and plantain, wound through groves of oranges and lemons, burst ripe guavas under his feet, stumbled over fallen brown-husked cocoa-nuts; but though their colours vaguely pleased his eye, he regarded them much as he did the coral shrubs on the floor of the lagoon - beautiful perhaps, but unedible certainly.

Ever and anon he sat down in some small clearing swept out by a fallen tree to rest, not because he was exactly tired, but because he felt lazy. Excessive bathing does produce that effect, as many can witness. The exertion of swimming may strengthen the bone and harden the muscle, but the effect of the water is to dissolve out of the system any desire for heavy exertion on land. So as Adam had got no engagements to fulfil which might have caused him to hurry, he called frequent halts, and thus pursued his way indolently. Clearings of any size were rare, for in a tropical climate the bare spot of to-day is knee-deep in verdure to-morrow, and for the most part feathery tree branches interlaced close above his head, and entirely blotted out the blue beyond. Landmarks for guidance he never got, but for all that he held on his way unhesitating, and steered a dead straight line. This is an especial faculty of the aboriginal. Civilized man has it not. If left to his own power in a forest, his footmarks will describe a tolerably accurate circle.

At last Adam emerged from the lower forest land, and wading through the narrow fringe of grasses at its edge, came out on to the rocky upper flank of the spur. It was steep, at least tolerably so, and not being over- active at this sort of work, he had to use his hands as well as feet for locomotion, and scrambled on to the crest a trifle exhausted. He lay first of all facing eastward, gazing over the ground which he would shortly have to traverse, having thrown himself down on a level spot under the lee of the ridge. But being hot, and a trifle wearied by exertion, he found the closeness of the sheltered side unrefreshing, and so stepped up again on the ridge where he would have full benefit of the trade- wind's cool fanning,

His new perch was a narrow one, and he sat huddled up, with arms clasping his knees, and chin just above them. For awhile,his eyes roved dreamily over the varied greens of the forest beneath him, and then they strayed to this smooth glistening lagoon, his harvest-field. But the glare dazzled him, and he raised his glance to seek. relief from the more sombre colouring of another islet some eight miles distant from his own. He gazed on it heavily from under his lowered brows for a few slow minutes, and then appeared to be gradually wakening from his habitual lethargy. His eyes focussed themselves on one particular spot, and stared at it incessantly. His hands slowly unclasped; his legs straightened; his head erected itself . Then he sprang smartly to his feet.

Adam was prey to a curiosity that was new to him, and all through seeing a thin blue film of vapour steal up from the herbage of a neighbouring islet.

"What could it be?" he thought. He looked around him. No, there was nothing like it on his own domain. Certainly the central mountain was capped with a snowy billow of cloud, but clouds were only for the high ground and this strange thing was emerging from the clear air by the sea-level.

This, his first effort at induction, exhausted Adam's surmises for the time being; and till the sun dipped below the horizon and closed out the view, he stood there and stared at it with wonder only.

Then he returned to his cave- dwelling, burrowed amongst the leaves, and for the first time in his life remained awake far into the darkness. It would be flattery to say he was thinking, for the power of thought had yet to be born in him; but on that night his brain began to surge and rouse from its dormant state, and under the change Adam felt as he had never felt before.

The following day he went up to the ridge and stayed there till the calls of hunger summoned him down to go fishing; and he did the same on many succeeding days. Sometimes he saw the blue vapour; one day thin and compact sprouting afar into the sky, on another merely filming above the tree-tops; but generally it was not in view. He was still without the slenderest theory as to its cause, and had no hope of discovering one; but it interested him as a strange thing must interest a sentient man who has never had anything of the kind to hold his attention before. In fact, as time went on, it exercised a complete fascination over him; and as regularly as the sun climbed into the heavens, did he scale the mountain spur and crouch there with curious gaze. Clouds and the morning mists were the only things he could compare it to, but the strange appearance was none of these. No, it was a thing apart; and it bewildered him utterly.

One evening, as he was lying awake, an idea struck him. Once on the other island, he could see how matters lay for himself.

Being slow-minded, this did not go home all at once. Indeed, its period of gestation spread over many days. But the wish grew upon him more and more as he stared at the film of vapour without understanding anything further about it, till at last he determined to put his scheme into execution.

It was no sudden hysterical resolve, this. Your explorer likes to know as fully as possible what he is going to do before he starts. Neither Columbus nor Amerigo Vespucci set out to discover their new world without first well weighing all the known dangers in their path, and allowing for those unknown perils which experience told them they might well expect. They were brave men, every one will allow, but Adam was braver. He certainly had an advantage over them in being able to see his bourne, which they could not do, but be was far behind them in another matter. He was used to coastal navigation, but of trafficking on the broader waters he knew nothing. They and their denizens were to him absolutely unknown, and therefore a terror; for, mind you, a ship's sheathing is a very different kind of bulwark to your own skin.

It was not exactly the distance which posed Adam. By itself that was a mere nothing. The water was warm, the current was in his favour, and be could have swum the eight miles with comparative ease. But it was what that strip of sea-lake might contain that put fear into him. A single shark he could tackle with his sharpened stake; but supposing others came at him when the weapon had been carried off by a victim, larger sharks perhaps than those which cruised in his own waters; and - strange beasts were always passing him under the surface - supposing worse than sharks attacked him. And, ugliest dread of all, supposing there were land-sharks on the other islet against whose opposition he could not go to shore. What would become of him then? Even if fresh he could scarcely hope to get up to his own territory again against the stream; and he would be wearied: so he must inevitably drown.

Having commenced to be a reasoning being, he showed himself these points in a critical light, and disliked the look of them vastly. He acknowledged that they terrified him. Pluck, you must remember, is a thing we learn from our companions; and Adam was a lone man.

But the desire to visit the other island increased upon him, and gave him no peace. Then I another idea seized him.

If he could only take the journey in several stages, so as to be fresh for each one!

He pondered over this point for a week, and one day suddenly left his seat on the mountain spur, and for the first time in his life ran - ran down to the shore, and looked steadfastly at his tiny raft. He seemed to derive some vague hint from it, but for a long time he could not put the notion into tangible shape.

The intelligent reader at once sees that simple addition was the only thing needed. But it must be remembered that even simple addition had to be invented by some one. It did not evolve spontaneously either out of nothing or out of chaos. So Adam spent most of his spare hours during another week staring at the raft, with the notion he wanted tickling at his fingers' ends, but ever eluding a firmer grasp.

The tiny craft had certainly been made by his own hands; but it was no invention. It replaced a former one which he had found floating ready-built by Nature for his convenience, and which he had used till it had collapsed into its primitive elements again through sheer old age. But little by little the mists of difficulty floated away, and the thing became clearer to him, till at last he set to work with a knowledge of what he was going to do. With hands and teeth as his only working tools, and an utter lack of technical skill to further hinder him, his labours were neither speedy, accurate, nor effective. But the thin blue column of vapour was a lure that kept him doggedly to his task; boughs, logs, and lianes were woven together; and at last there floated on the lagoon a thing that was the first boat in Adam's world.

On the further side was an orange grove, not of stunted bushes such as one sees on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, but of sturdy trees under whose groined and vaulted foliage one might walk erect, and whose luscious yellow spheres one could not reach without a climb. Day in and day out, the trade-wind rustled through these leafy aisles, crossed the crystal brook which tinkled along a pebbly channel below, and discharged its cool aromatic breath full into the clearing. The fragrant zephyr seemed to add scent to the flowers, as it rustled away through the vines and orchids which draped the columned palms at the back, and to keep the verdure of all the plants perennially sweet and fresh.

And all was of Nature's gardening. Eve saw and appreciated the beauties around her, but.she had no hand in their ordering herself. And so the lily was not painted, but remained a lily still. Yet Eve had a rudely artistic eye, and the only piece of her handiwork which was to be seen there harmonized peacefully with the whole. It was a bower, a rustic structure of foliaged branches, slender wands, and.broad heavily-ribbed banana leaves, partly re-rooted and growing from the kindly soil, partly dry and dead, but all overlaid and woven together by clinging tendrils of the creeping plants, and jewelled from foot to rooftree with brilliant fantastic orchids.

All Eve's senses took delight in these beauties of her surroundings.

The morning sun was high in the heavens before Eve awoke, and even after lifting her eyes she did not rise. She gave a half-sigh, smiled faintly, closed her lids. again, and turned over on her other side to enjoy the luxury of a second doze.

Like Adam's, her mattress was of dry spring leaves, but she had progressed beyond him in the matter of coverlet. To protect her body from the night dews, she had stitched together a patch quilt of coarse palm-hessing, and lined it with downy tufts of wild cotton. You see Eve's ideas of comfort were in advance of those of her fellow- mortal who reigned over the adjacent islet, and consequently her invention had in some points outstripped his.

Eve was roused finally by a voice calling her. A small parrot, with one wing trailing on the ground, had waddled in through the entrance of the bower. She looked up and spoke to the bird, and was answered, though not intelligently.

But the sound of speech pleased her, and so the disjointed conversation went on for some time. Eve would have preferred a sentient companion; but as that boon was denied her, she put up with the bird, into whose mechanical brain she had instilled a cluster of sentences which were delivered at haphazard. She would rather have passed the day without food than without talking.

However, food was a necessity to her, so after enjoying her matutinal chat, she threw off the coverlet and got up. Then going out into the open she stretched herself luxuriously, and cast a complacent, eye over the curves of her well-moulded form.

She was a shapely woman of twenty; supple-limbed, comely-faced; with heavy masses of sunny golden hair falling over her breasts and back and shoulders. Her skin was browned, but not to so deep a tint as Adam's; whilst her face was far brighter and far more intellectual in expression than his. Yet one could not have pronounced unhesitatingly as to which of the two was the higher type of humanity. At present Adam had not half her wit, nor a tithe of her general cleverness; he could not even utter his thoughts aloud; but his forehead had begun to pucker, and his brain to strive after knowledge which it didn't possess, whilst she was perfectly contented with what she knew already, and likely to remain, so. But this is a point which will come out further as their history develops, so at present we will leave the comparison unmade, and return to Eve's morning exercises.

Her first move after arousing herself into wakefulness, and taking in the fresh morning delights of the flowers and foliage around her, was to walk round to a pile of pale gray ashes at the back of her bower. She stirred about the centre of these with a piece of stick, and unearthing a few fragments of glowing charcoal, tossed them together, and added fresh fuel from a stack close at hand. Then, after watching for a minute or two till the yellow flames began to crackle up, and the fire was thoroughly alight, she stole off amongst the tree-stems, and was lost to view in the forest.

In about an hour she returned, bearing with her a small jewel-coated lizard, a bunch of plantains, and three green cocoa-nuts. Culinary operations were simple but effective. The lizard, shrouded in a garment of clay, was buried in a grave dug in the midst of the embers. the plantains were laid on to toast; and Eve sat herself down upon a moss-covered stump, and talked to the parrot till' her breakfast should be ready.

Experience had taught her to calculate the requisite time, and. when that had elapsed she took the lizard out of his fiery resting-place, and removing clay and skin together, exposed the flesh done to a nicety. On that and the plantains she made her leisurely meal, and washed it down with nectar from the green cocoa-nuts.

The parrot meanwhile stood near, and from time to time bending over his head knowingly on one side, rubbed the crown of it against her leg, and was promptly rewarded with a mouthful. Eve revelled in a caress, and the bird was wily enough to know it, though he did not make his endearments too cheap by being overlavish with them.

When the meal was over, Eve lay back on the soft moss, talking to herself and the parrot, crooning melodies of her own composing, and now and then holding conversations with imaginary beings amongst the trees, who replied to her with rustlingswhich she translated according to her own desires. She sometimes even carried her antics so far as to stroke her own sleek body with her own slim hand, deriving some vague delight therefrom. But, mind you, she did not try to imagine the hand an alien one. Like Adam, she was unconscious that the world contained another being in her own image; and when she rubbed and patted her bare flesh the pleasure was a purely physical one, without the slightest tinge of mental complement. Eve's knowledge of her species was limited to herself. She had a few memories of the past. She could recollect a time when she was shorter and slimmer, when she could press through interstices of the forest which were barred to her now, when her hair was less luxuriant, when - oh, when she was different in many ways. But though these facts came back to her when she wished to recall them it was seldom that she conjured them up. She was too content with her present to care for retrospection. And so as she grew, the past, which she valued at nothing.was more and more vignetted into forgetfulness.

As the sun drew near overhead and began to dapple her limbs with gold thrown through the tree-tops Eve moved off into the bower, and there composed herself for a mid-day siesta.

But it did not last for long. When the meridian heat had burni itself out, and the shadows were beginning to gain strength and lengthen out again, she rose briskly, and once more passed beyond the limits of her clearing. She was young and full of health and strength, and these things beget energy; and she had moreover to forage for her next meal. Eve was not savage in this respect. She did not gorge herself once for the whole day. She liked to do her eating at thrice, and was dearly fond of a bite and a sup of something sweet between-whiles, for the afternoon-tea instinct of the sex was thoroughly developed in her. And so, she was accustomed to roam through some tract of her domain every day.

The islet was not large, and Eve knew the whole of it perfectly; but as the paths which her feet had made were many, and without set direction, she was always able to select some combination of stages that was new to her.

Every afternoon she turned out in this way, browsing, bird-fashion, on the fruits which struck, her fancy, and ever, Diana-like, keeping her eye open to the chance of a more solid capture. She did not possess the swift-flying arrow, nor the sling, nor the lance, nor the sword, nor the knobkerry. In fact she had no fashioned weapon. But she had acquired a knack lost to ladies since the days of the huntress-deity of hurling a missile in such a way that it often reached the mark aimed at; and by this means she usually contrived daily to replenish her larder with, say, an uncouth-looking hornbill, or a gay- plumaged parrakeet.

However, on the afternoon in question, her foraging for a supper- roast had for some time not been attended with success. Thrice had she hove weighty pieces of root timber at perching birds and missed; twice had she flung herself at megapodes crossing her path en route for their layingyards, and twice been rewarded by tufts of unnutritious brown feathers; and once she had missed a big monitor lizard by an inch, and suffered him to escape into a cranny without even being able to rob him of his tail. And the day was wearing on. It seemed as if her evening meal was destined to be a purely vegetarian one.

The day was drawing to a close, and Eve had already turned homewards. She liked to have everything completed by sunset, and then to enter her bower, lie down, and snug her head beneath the coverlet; for she had a horror of the darkness.

Of a sudden she stopped. A whitebodied kingfisher was perched on a bough close above her, settling down for the night. The knotted, root flew fiercely through the air, and crushed in the azure head. The bird was killed on the instant, but by a final muscular effort, its dark blue wings spread out and moored the dead body securely to the foliage.

Eve took in the situation in a moment, and was in no wise put out by it. The tree was a young cotton-wood, with the nearest branch twenty feet from the ground; but her muscular fingers and toes found holds amongst the interstices of the bark, and up she ran as easily and lightly as a squirrel could have done. The bird was soon secured, and the captor was laying-in along the branch to regain the trunk again, when of a sudden she stopped. Through a gap in the foliage was shown a tiny picture of the sea.

Eve stopped there, striding the branch for full five minutes, motionless as a second Brynhild. Then the kingfisher toppled down to the sod, a ruffled mass of white and azure plumage, and the huntress sprang eagerly up to the swaying topmost branches. The spell of silence was broken then, and she talked to herself and to the rustling tree-ghosts around as she had never talked before; but her thoughts were chaotic, and consequently her speech lacked coherency. Her heart was beating rapidly, and she had a hand pressed to her bosom to check its pulsing. Her face flushed and blanched alternately, and she was dancing up and down on her lissom perch till the whole tree swayed again.

She was nearly wild with excitement, yet she could not tell why. All that had caught her eye from below was a tiny sea-scape, half hidden by the waving tree-fronds. All she could see more from above was a brown huddle of floating logs with something of a lighter brown crouched motionless upon them. It was a something she had never seen before; a something whose existence had never dawned upon her previously; a something whose form she could only conjecture then. The distance was great, and the seas were constantly hiding the logs and their burden from view. But by telepathy, or some far-searching power of the kind, the coming of this thing was stirring her up to the verge of hysterics.

Of a sudden, as she watched, her eyes told her that the float had drawn nearer. She leapt from bough to bough like a flying squirrel, and in a matter of seconds was on the ground, and had started off through the forest towards the shore. She ran as fast as her supple limbs would carry her, pushing through the palm-scrub, and round the trees, and under the lianes, till her brow was beaded and the thick panting of her breath threatened suffocation. She had never travelled so fast before.

On she went, making straight across the island, till she had gone a few yards past a stream which trickled out of a morass. Then she slackened pace and hesitated. Finally, turning back, she walked to the brink of a placid black-rooted pool, and there stopped, examining her mirrored length attentively. She looked herself carefully up and down from foot to head, and then stooping scanned her features in greater detail.

She had done this before many times, and had gazed at her reflected. self with smiling satisfaction, murmuring the while, "Pretty, pretty, beautiful." But now the change which had come over her made her view the image with vaguely dissatisfied eye. Instinctively she put up her fingers and combed out the ends of twig and scraps of leaf which the masses of her yellow hair had gleaned during that rapid flight through the woods; and splashing up the cool waters of the pool, she removed the earth-marks from her limbs, and for the moment felt half-satisfied. But there seemed something else wanting, which however soon suggested itself. As she moved off shorewards again, a bush of hibiscus caught her eye, and she stopped and looked at it thoughtfully. But a little consideration gave her the wished-for idea, and plucking a dozen of the flowers, she wove. them into a coronet and placed it on her head.

Returning to the mirror pool she gazed at her reflection again, first with smiling complacency, and then with growing puzzlement.

Blood-red blossom on golden hair: the effect was barbaric splendour, which pleased her. But what had led her to make it? That she was trying to understand.

It was her first effort at personal adornment.

The raft was bending about like a venetian blind in a breeze, and Adam was crouched in the middle of it, swept by every other sea haggard, helpless, hopeless. Everything seemed to have gone awry. The winds and currents had all behaved unkindly. The voyage had lasted days instead of hours. Whilst in the broad sea-lake he had been drifting without power of moving himself. His powers of swimming, wherein he had trusted, were ruthlessly made of no avail. The devils of the waters had proved too many for him. Those seven pointed stakes, with which his armoury was furnished, had been used with dire effect; but the lesson was not sufficient. It takes a shark some time to die when he is spritsail-yarded, and although in the meantime his torments are heavy, his surviving brethren do not draw the obvious lesson till they see him floating with his white belly facing towards the sky. From time to time one of the conquered ones would surge madly past with jaws immovably locked apart, and Adam would follow with his eyes till the gaping victim was out of sight. Then he would glance at the fleet of black lateen-shaped fins which-cruised so symmetrically around him, and remembering his weaponless condition, would shudder and feel that still more fear was put into him.

He was in pain with hunger, he was parched with thirst, he was weary with watching; and he ached from head to foot, for the wind chilled him to the marrow when he rose streaming out of the water.

His life had been an easy one, and he was unused to these hardships. But tbough he bitterly regretted the step he had taken, there was no hope of regaining his own island now. So being an ignorant man, hope left him; for he saw no way out of his difficulties. He was quite of opinion that the sharks must get him in the end.

But in this hour of blank despair some hereditary doggedness, long dormant, cropped out into life, and forced him to struggle through to the bitter end. It would not allow him to throw up the sponge. It would oblige him to help himself so long as he could raise a hand to do it. So every now and again he tautened up a liane which was working loose; and every twenty minutes or so, when the patrol seemed a trifle less vigilant, he used his hands as paddles till the scurry of the warning triangular fins forced him to desist.

And thus by degrees, imperceptible to himself, Adam passed over a shoal where the current was slack, on to a deeper part of the lagoon where the tide set in a different direction, and swept him steadily along- towards his bourne,

He was usually very low in the water, and so for the greater part of the time his view was circumscribed to immediate surroundings. Then the gradual change of the raft's position had escaped his notice; and when at last he chanced to look from the top of a watery eminence and saw the coveted shore - and safety and something else close at hand, he was nearly paralyzed with astonishment. The sight literally made him gasp.

Next instant he slid down into a trough, and as the raft smothered through the next two wave-crests instead of rising dryly over them, his view was blotted out for some time, and he was constrained to think that what he had seen was really a dream.

But again he was perched on a rolling hillock, and again the scene was displayed before him. No, he was not mistaken. The island was there surely enough, and he was nearing it rapidly. And that other thing? Why it seemed to be an exact replica of himself.

Again and again Adam bent his eyes on the shore, always focussing them on the other biped, who was sometimes standing still, sometimes running hither and thither along the beach, but always gazing at him intently. His coming seemed to be arousing interest, even excitement; but being unused to translating the gestures of his species, he could not make out whether the signs foreboded a friendly reception or a hostile one. But as they puzzled him, he was more inclined towards the sinister view.

By some curious logic best comprehended of himself, Adam had from the first connected this unlooked-for being with the mysterious blue vapour to discover whose origin he had left his own island; and in consequence he naturally enough discovered and took possession of an entirely new set of tremors. The vapour was created by some means he did not understand; therefore the stranger was possessed of powers which he lacked; and therefore it was quite possible that he was running into danger. The sequence was obvious enough. But the perils of the waters which he was gradually escaping from were too heavy to be easily outweighed; added to which, it was impossible for him to return, even if he wished to do so. Wherefore Adam, like a wise man, determined to encounter the unknown before him with what courage he might assume: but for all that the prospect of the ordeal made him feel far from comfortable.

Let us look at the other side of the picture, where, allowing for different temperament, much the same sort of mental turmoil was taking place.

Eve was nearly beside herself with excitement. Within the last few hours and after twenty years of delay, the fact had been suddenly sprung upon her that she was not alone in the world; and the revelation strained her brain to an almost bursting tension. Her feelings and anticipations she could not analyze in the least; and though they were on the whole pleasurable their intensity was well-nigh maddening. They affected her whole being. She could not stand still for more than a minute at a time. The restlessness of her mind spread through every nerve in her body. She raced along the hummocky beach, ran up and down the stems of the palms, danced on the patches of sea-moss, and talked excitedly to herself the whole time. Her antics constantly loosened the wreath of scarlet blossoms, and ever and anon she stopped to adjust them. Wonderment at her action in placing them on her head had passed away by this. She had soon come to comprehend their use and object, and to look upon them as a necessary armour for the coming encounter.

The raft and its passenger, under the influenceof stream and wind, now united, was nearing her rapidly. Being gifted with keen sight, she could distinguish the lineaments of the newcomer from a Iong way off, and noted that though they varied in detail from her own (as studied in the mirror pool), the pair were much alike. His hair, it is true, was different. It was not so luxuriant, and also it was black. On observing this, she instantly congratulated herself on the. golden hue of her own tresses, that being in her idea incomparably the more beautiful shade. As he drew closer, she also noted with a vague alarm that the stranger was taller and heavier boned than herself, and she glanced over her own supple rounded body, and involuntarily took a few steps backwards towards the sheltering woods. But the sudden movement half unseated the coronet of flowers; and as she put up her hands to readjust it, a thought flashed which caused her to smile with a return of confidence, and to advance once more down the beach.

The occupant of the raft was regarding her curiously.

Actuated by a sudden impulse, she waved her hand at him. For a while he took no notice; but as Eve continued to brandish her arms aloft, he lifted his hand in reply, and she was satisfied. It was the first communication she had ever received from a fellow human being, and it made a thrill tingle through her which set her feet dancing afresh.

Then she tried a hail, a short sentence of welcome such as she bestowed on her parrot when it roused her in the morning; but though she repeated it a- many times the advancing mariner vouchsafed no response. He bent his ear to listen, but his face gave no signs of intelligence. So Eve set him down as a fool with much promptness. Her parrot always made some reply to her remarks, and though these were usually wide of the mark, they were better than a stone- like silence. Wherefore Eve assessed Adam's wit as less than the parrot's, and decided there and then that he was to be her vassal. But she did not undervalue the boon of his society for all that; and suddenly noting that the raft was beginning to sheer off towards a belt of mangroves, she forgot all about these hastily-formed ideas, and was once more wholly engrossed in the initial single pore of seeing a companion safe before her on land.

So she started signalling furiously to Adam to continue in his old course, and avoid the mangroves. She had narrowly escaped from that hideous quagmire herself once, and she knew that if the voyager attempted to disembark there he would be hopelessly engulfed, and lost to her at once.

As the raft went on, and its occupant made no attempt to govern it, according to her directions, this last thought went deeper and deeper home; and Eve's excitement, which had lately calmed somewhat, broke out afresh with tenfold intensity. The boon of companionship with another of her own species had been dangled before her eyes only to be snatched ruthlessly away again. She grew almost beside herself with the heaviness of her emotions. She screamed, she sobbed and shrieked in her agony of dread; but still the man took no heed of her frenzied warnings, and voyaged stolidly on, as she thought, to his doom.

Every time the raft rose on a swell it had neared the tangled growth of slime and root by a yard, till at last she could tell how many waves would launch its occupant to destruction. There were but four more required. Fascinated, she desisted from her outcry, and watched in trembling silence. It was too late: she could give no help then.

The fatal hour swept in, the raft struck and went to pieces, and the man slid off and passed out of her sight. He was being swallowed up in the black unctuous ooze, and was lost to her forever.

Eve knew no more. For the first time in her life she had fainted.

Now, although Adam had in part comprehended Eve's signals, he did not know how to acknowledge them intelligibly. Moreover, he saw that, taking into account all his circumstances, her pilotage was erroneous. From his coign of vantage he could see the contour of the coast which she could not do and made out that there was a good firm beach which the same current was sweeping past further down.

He was not going to make the mistake of trying to effect a landing amongst the mangroves: he knew by experience what that meant as well as Eve did; but he was also aware that the shallow water alongside their roots would be free from sharks, and so his swimming powers would come into play again, and he would feel at home once more. So be let his crazy raft drift on till it was broken up, as Eve, had witnessed, and then slipping off, was on hard ground in less than half an hour.

Crawling above the spray-line, exhaustion kept him stretched out motionless for some time; but hunger and thirst especially thirst began to assert themselves, and he raised himself wearily to his legs, and looked about him. The foreshore was narrow, the dense tropical vegetation coming down almost to the water's edge. It would be a slow task forcing a path through that tangled jungle. But this did not trouble him much. Being a fisherman by trade, and a fish-eater only, his food lay in the sea or at its edge; and being exclusively a water-drinker, he would be sure to come across the wherewithal to quench his thirst if he kept on along the shore long enough. For streams, as far as Adam had observed them, never come to a final end inland, though they may for awhile dissipate in a swamp. So turning his back on the mangroves and Eve he trudged heavily along towards the glowing sunset, with his foraging senses keenly on the alert.

As it chanced he had not far to go; and as the tinkling of the brook broke upon his ears before he reached it, his pangs of thirst redoubled, and his tired feet broke into a run. Throwing himself down by the brink, he drank his fill, and rose back on to his haunches. Then stooping down again, he drank and drank more, till he nearly burst. Adam was no man for moderation in regard to the appeals of his stomach when the wherewithal to satisfy them was at hand.

The immediate effect of this debauch was pain; but conceiving that this arose from want of food, he clambered down into a rocky pool, and culling from it an armful of shell-fish, made from them a leathery meal, which he considered would last him until he had strength and opportunity to obtain better sustenance in the morning. And then, as the night had come, and his eyelids were drooping, and his legs refused to carry him any further, he lay down where he was, and heaping up the warm dry sand over his salt-encrusted body, fell instantly to sleep.

The morning was hot and far advanced before Adam had opened his eyes again. He looked around him for a minute or so, forgetful of where he was; and then, as the events of the immediate past returned; he shook himself clear of the coverlet of sand, and rose stiffly to his feet.

The ordeal he had gone through had written its tale in very plain characters. His cheeks were hollow, and his eyes were glaring, his long hair was hardened into solid mat with salt and sand; the bones of his body stood out so promimently that they outlined themselves with shadows. Adam looked very gaunt, very hungry, very savage, and altogether unpleasant,

But after the lapse of a couple of hours during which time he dived frequently into the lagoon, brought to shore a score or so of small fish and many oysters, and had eaten as much as he could hold,

washing the same down with copious draughts of water he contrived to make himself look another person. His eye had lost its wild brightness; his brows were raised again, and the fierce linings of his face smoothed out; his lank hair once more streamed down his back, black and glossy; and the flesh of his body seemed to have plimmed out again till the valleys beside the bones were scarcely noticeable. A civilized man would have taken far longer to bring about this partial recovery; but you see Adam had the pull of being very uncivilized.

Having fulfilled the canons of the sex by attending first to his own physical comforts, Adam's thoughts naturally turned next to the strange being who had witnessed his coming, and who had made those various signs and signals to him on the day before. He had already connected her with the blue vapour which lured him into the perils of a voyage from his own domain, and somehow the thing surprised him she had instantly usurped the principal interest in his mind. He was curious about the vapour still; but he was more curious about her, the reason of this he did not understand, though he tried hard to grasp it; but accepting the fact, he determined to examine Eve first and let the other wonder stand over and take second turn.

As though she had been a tree, this untutored man expected to find the woman on the spot where he had seen her the day before; and, although his reasoning was wrong, his conclusion was correct, A medium intellect would have promptly decided that after the catastrophe which she fancied she had witnessed, Eve had betaken herself elsewhere. A cleverer man's decision would, as is often the case, have coincided with that of the complete ignoramus.

So he decided to go there forthwith.

There were three ways of reaching the place. The first was to swim round on the sea-side like a fish; the second to fly over the mangroves like a bird; and the third to walk, man- fashion, round the land side. Number two was impracticable; but Adam debated long between one and three before he could make up his mind to either. His instincts were human to a certain extent; but they were fish-like as well, for he was a thoroughly amphibious animal. Moreover, he did not know the road by land, but he had already traversed most of the sea-route. So in the end he decided that he had had enough of exploring for the present, and without more ado started to make his journey by water. The way was short; there would be no sharks close in shore; and if he found he couldn't stem the current, why then he would be carried back whence he came, and would be no worse off than before.

As Eve was as robust a young woman as one might chance to meet in a Iong week's march, and possessed, moreover, a constitution that had never been tampered with by tight-lacing, or physic, or ice-creams, or any of the other devilments of feminine civilization; and as her fainting-fit was purely and solely the result of an unaccustomed excess of excitement, it was not long before she came to her senses again. For, you see, Nature, taking the case in hand, threw her down, and allowing the blood to flow freely to the exhausted vessels of the head, soon got the machine of life into full running order again.

The poor thing was a trifle dazed at first, and sat up and passed her hands wonderingly before her eyes more than once before she could see clearly again; but of a sudden the events of the last hour or so re- collected themselves before her, and with an effort she was herself again. Springing nimbly to her feet, she ran down to the water's edge. The straggling boundary of the mangroves was fringed with fragments of the raft heaving up and down on the swell; and Adam was not. No, she had lost him for ever; her dream of companionship had been but a dream. after all she must go back to the parrot. And Eve tore the floral wreath from her hair, and trampling it under- foot, wailed anew.

But a period was put to her grief. The last arc of the sun had dipped below the plain of water far away out there beyond the reefs, and the after-glow was rapidly deepening into purple. Already three stars were flickering brightly above her, and others were struggling into birth. There was no twilight in the zone where this Eden lay: for Night was a haughty goddess, who hesitated not to tread on the heels of Day.

Eve glanced fearfully around. Her bower was far off in another quarter of the island; and between her and it lay a thick wood which she dare not traverse when the shades had thickened. Already the horror of darkness was upon her, and she was trembling like an agave- leaf in the trade-wind. She ran hither and thither across the beach through the rapidly deepening gloom, sobbing, terrified. She sought a shelter everywhere, but could see none which. would harbour her.

At last, darting to the stem of a lofty palm, she climbed it with frantic haste, and reaching the crown, started tearing away the leafy fronds as though life depended upon her efforts. Then, coiling herself down, she muffled her head from sight under the stack of foliage, and being able to see nothing, knew that she was secure.

One cannot help envying the ostrich and other bipeds at times.

Eve's sleep was a troubled one, for the crown of a cabbage-palm makes but a sorry couch; and consequently she was treated to dreams in never-ending succession, in which she and Adam invariably posed as central figures. The parrot alone occasionally intruded, but only in the background. Adam was the superior animal, perhaps because he was the newer one.

She woke in the early morning heavy-eyed and unrefreshed, and promptly descended to the ground. But she did not return to her bower, neitber did she set about foraging for breakfast. A bank of green moss had caught her eye, and on it she laid herself forthwith to make up for the broken dozing of the night. Eve, liked sleep.

She roused herself finally at the moment when Adam was setting off to meet her, strolled into the woods and made her morning's meal from four small plantains for she had but little appetite and then moved away towards her bower. But after a few steps she slackened her stride, wavered,, and finally turned back. The memory of the evening before was big in her, and she could not tear herself away without one more look at the place. After that she would go away, endeavour to forget what had happened, and never venture near the spot again.

And so it came to pass, that at the very moment when Adam was hauling himself out of the water, she was bursting through the foliage which lined the other side of the beach; and their eyes met. The surprise was mutual. Both stopped dead, and for full five-minutes they stared at one another without moving a muscle.

Adam was the first to move. Being quite prepared to find the stranger of the day before in the land of the living and in fact confidently expecting to come across her in that very spot, he naturally recovered himself most easily: and rising up from his hands and knees, made a single step away from the water. As Eve made no movement either forward or back, he took another pace, and then another, and then a fourth. But that broke the spell. Eve knew not how to swim, and so she regarded this newcomer, whom she had thought dead, but who had apparently rested safely all this time in the waters, with dread. Her courage failed her, and she fled screaming into the woods. The fright, looked at from that point of view, was natural enough.

At first she set off at frantic speed, feeling certain of pursuit; but hearing no crashing of branches to tell of heavy footsteps following close behind her, she gradually slackened her pace, and finally came to a standstill.

Bending her ear, she listened intently. Beyond the usual noises of the woods there was no sound. The only live things around her were birds, and lizards, and insects. Then Adam had not pursued her after all!

A vague sense of disappointment crept over her. Eve herself was surprised at the feeling, for it was but a few short minutes before that she was exerting every muscle to keep clear of his reach. But she was disappointed that he had not run after her not even a little way; and she felt a trifle disgusted too. What could he be doing? She ran up a palm and looked out. But the tree was not high enough to let her see over the foliage which intervened between it and the narrow strip of beach; so coming down, she climbed up a taller one a cottonwood. From that she could make out what she was looking for. Adam was there still, lying at full length on the white coral sand, twirling his thumbs and gazing at the sky. Also yes, the sounds came gently to her down the trade-wind - he was whistling.

She came to the ground again. She was beginning to feel irritated against Adam. She might be right yesterday after all, when she set him down as a fool. But still he was a muscular fool, and therefore she could not get over her dread of his physical powers all at once. If he would come to seek her, she would not fly so far before him again. No, she would go slowly for just a few steps, and then await his coming.

And so she sat down and waited for an hour or more, and then climbed the tree again. Adam was still in the same position, studying the fleckless azure above him, and engaged in manual and musical exercises as before.

Eve felt sure then that he was a fool, and began to know that a slight was being put upon her. But she wished heartily that she had not run away so determinedly in the first instance. If she had only made a pretence of flight, it might it might all have been well. However, he might get wearied of waiting and seek her yet, so in this hope she waited for another long space, and then again went to her post of observation.

Horrors! The man was standing up. He was looking to seaward, He might be going to leave her for good.

Eve came rapidly to the ground. She felt she must take the initiative after all, or lose beyond recall the thing she wished for; and so with some trembling she began hastily to retrace her steps towards, the coast. She only stopped once, and that was before a bush of hibiscus, for what purpose may be guessed. Her toilette did not take long, however. The minutes were too precious, and if she dawdled over minuti‘, it might mean that, adorned or unadorned, her chance was lost altogether. So pinning the flowers hastily into her hair by their own woody stalks, she pressed forward, afresh with new confidence.

She reached the edge of the woods, and saw Adam in the very act of wading out into the water.

He had felt hungry again, and was merely going a-fishing. But this she did not know; and being certain in her own mind that he was on the point of leaving her again for good, she cried aloud for him to stop.

He turned and faced her and then coming slowly up out of the water, advanced to meet her. And this time Eve held her ground.

But conceive the position of our Adam and Eve. The one couldn't utter a word; and the other was completely ignorant of such sentences as "Good afternoon," "I'm so glad you've come," or "I do hope you had a good passage" which little inanities frequently give rise to sane conversation. Also it was impossible for the linguist to fall back on the formula quoted above and say "Mr. Adam, I believe? " because, in the first place, she didn't know the gentleman's name was Adam, and in the second she was ignorant of the very existence of such a thing as a proper noun. Add to which, if she had spoken he would not have understood her. So the situation was incapable of being spoiled or improved by the utterance of any phrase, suitable or otherwise; and it was clearly a case for deeds and not words.

For a long time the pair looked one another up and down from a distance of two paces, curiously, and without embarrassment. Each saw that though the other differed in points, there was a general likeness, as there is bound to be in two beings of the same species; and as the one had only seen birds and insects and reptiles before, and as the other, still less observant, was acquainted with various genera of fish alone, it was a most allowable opportunity for a lengthy and interested stare.

But sight-seeing of this description palls after a while even on the least blasé people; and first Eve, and then Adam, began to grow restless, and to wonder what should be the next move. The question was a difficult one to settle. Neither had the crudest notion of the usages of human society adapted for such a position; and one naturally might have looked for an original development. But nothing novel came. The d´nouement was a wonderfully hackneyed one. Eve gradually came to understand that Adam was the visitor, and that she, as hostess, ought to entertain him. So she said,

"Come with me, and see my home," and then moved off towards a path through the woods, leading the way.

The words were to Adam a meaningless sound; but the gesture which accompanied them was plain to him, and he followed close upon his guide's heels obediently enough, though roving his eyes watchfully about to make sure he was not being led into danger. For his mind was beginning to wake, and, like most sparsely-filled minds, it was pregnant with suspicion.

The forest was thick and matted together with scrub and creepers, and save by the paths which Eve had torn for her own convenience, it was more or less impassable. But every now and again they came across an open glade, and the leader would fall back a pace or two and come alongside of her guest. She talked to him, smiled on him, and pointed out those beauties of the woods which pleased her; and he looked where he was bidden, and replied to her advances as best as he was able. But his perception was slow, and his power of expressing his ideas almost nil; and because his intellect was so much behind hers, Eve's natural feeling of superiority was largely tinctured with contempt. She had lost her sense of fear long ago. Adam's frame might be larger and heavier than hers, but physical encounter was strange to her, and of this she recked nothing. Hers was the stronger mind, and therefore hers it would be to govern. Indeed, during that walk she had decided that Adam was to be her slave, her serf, her servant; and was trying to figure out to herself in what way he might be made most available. It never dawned upon her that he might rebel against this arrangement, or that she herself might wish him to assume a more elevated, more familiar position. Friendship and love are not ideas you can learn from intercourse with a parrot, nor yet can you pick them up by chatting to trees or eulogizing the shapes and colours of the flowers; and Eve's ideas of sentiment were brand-new just then, and had their limits.

Adam, on the other hand, had made no comparisons between himself and Eve, flatterin or otherwise. He formed no schemes. He simply awaited theoutcome of events the which is often a very sensible course to take, if you have only sufficient patience to see it through and shambled along without looking much about him.

They reached the clearing by the brook and the orange grove after an hour's walk, and Eve, pointing to the bower, said that she lived there. Adam understood, and nodded to express the same that crude gesture of assent being, by the way, a thing he had learnt on the island already but he did not show any admiration. He looked inside, fingered the coverlet, stirred the dry lea ves, and then came out again and stood up. On the tapestry of flowers and creepers he did not bestow so much as a glance; but he turned again to Eve, and as she noted that his eyes, although they roved a good deal, always kept wandering back to her face and the coronet of flowers, she forgave him forthwith for not appreciating her bower. And when, after she had plucked a spray or two of orchids and adorned herself further, he actually smiled a rusty smile he whose features had never so contorted themselves before she smiled back upon him brilliantly, and felt a kindliness rise in her that she was at a loss to account for.

But for all that she had by no means abandoned her intention of making a menial of him. Indeed, it was not necessary that she should do so, for a servant who admires one is usually the best worker, and it is only when counter- admiration commences that difficulties begin to crop up. And so far, Eve's feelings were absolutely wanting in that respect.

So she proceeded to appoint Adam her hewer of wood, and doubtless would have nominated him drawer of water as well if she had possessed a vessel in which the drawing could have been done, or if it had occurred to her to wish for water in a place other than that in which Nature had stored it.

"My fuel is used up," she said to him, signing a translation of the words as she proceeded. "You must gather sticks and pile them here till the stack is breast-high. You understand? Yes? Very well; then I will go and collect food for the pair of us. Food something to eat ah, you grasp that don't you?"

Eve waited to see her new assistant fairly at work, so as to make sure that there was no doubt about his comprehension of what he had to do; and then leaving him, plunged off into the forests to forage. They exchanged a nod at parting, and Adam busied himself with collecting an armful of sticks, which he carried.back with him and deposited on the stack. But he did not return for more. He stood still, pondered awhile, and then chuckling softly, threw himself down on the bed of green moss close at hand, upon which the rays of the afternoon sun were beaming warmly. Eve expected to find a pile of wood on her return. She might expect, but she would not find.

He repeated this over and over to himself, and was in his quiet way vastly amused. It was a flash of elementary humour, having that true tincture of cruelty with which such primitive attempts are always tainted; and being his first attempt at anything of the kind, he naturally took great pleasure and interest in it. What the store of wood was for he had not a notion, nor did he attempt to discover. There were certain things he recognized as being beyond his understanding, an waited philosophically till they were explained to him. A young mind does wisely not to strain itself unduly at first. And meanwhile the joke could be enjoyed to the full by the simple knowledge that Eve wanted the wood for purposes of her own.

So Adam idled away the afternoon, placidly enjoying the beauties of his jest, and towards its close Eve returned. She was rather hot, and a trifle tired; for she bad set herself to collect double rations, which of course entailed double exertion. And so when she came opposite to the place where the stack ought to have been, and saw it not, she naturally became extremely cross as well. But what could she do? When she asked Adam "What he meant by it?" he only pointed first at the solitary faggot, then derisively at her, and then lay back again on the moss and laughed. It was impossible to get anything more satisfactory out of him.

Poor girl, it never dawned upon her that the thing was intended as a piece of wit; that Adam wished to imply that he had what is, familiarly termed "scored off" her. She failed to see the humorous side of it altogether. From her point of view her bondman had rebelled, and her task must be to bring him back to allegiance. But how to do it she hadn't a notion. When she used hard language at him the same that served for the parrot when it stuck its claws into her flesh she had the mortification to see him laugh all the more with pleasure at knowing that his jest had told so deeply; and when she bade him get up there and then and go and make good his remission, he flatly refused to understand. So at last she gave him up as a bad job, and set to work making up the fire, and cooking the dinner.

As it turned out, she could not have made a more masterly move. Adam was soon reduced to solemnity again. He observed her rake amongst the gray dust of the fire-heap; he watched the dull red and black charcoal embers exposed to view; he saw the sticks laid lightly upon them; ahd he looked on apathetically enough whilst she knelt down, and bending low her head, fanned the fuel into a blaze with her breath. But when he saw the smoke, that same blue vapour he had come so far and surmounted so many perils to behold, created as it were before his very eyes, he started to his feet with rippling scalp and whole body dewed with moisture.

Eve, hearing him move, turned and took in the situation at a glance, and nodded to him significantly as who would say, "You see what manner of person you have been taking liberties with." She did not speak, however; but crouching beside the rising pillar of smoke, glared at him fixedly for awhile, and then motioned him to sit down again. Adam obeyed, trembling. Then, without taking further notice of him, she went on with her cooking - cooking for two - and ostentatiously busied herself with the details till all was finished. Then, uncovering her roasts, she offered Adam a steaming bird and a couple of baked plantains, holding them towards him in tongs made from a pair of sticks.

He took the food willingly enough, not knowing, of course, that it was hot. But when the heat reached the nerves, he dropped the food with a howl of pain, leaped to his feet, and fled madly away. He darted across the slope into the brook, and plashed wildly over the stones down-stream. He was making for the sea. This place was strange to him, and terrible. He would be safe there.

Eve looked after him, laughing. She had not intended to repay Adam's practical joke with another; but now that one had, so to speak, evolved of itself, and the stinging point lay in the other direction, she was by no means unconscious of the humour of it. In fact several times during her meal bursts of merriment overcame her, and she was fain to roll over and over on the short turf till they had subsided.

She extracted the fun of the situation to its very last drop, and the sweet draugbt lasted her till bedtime. But then the sun went down, and with it her enjoyment ended. Adam had not returned, nor had he shown any signs of doing so, But though be was out of sight, he was very emphatically not out of mind. He was the one object of her thoughts, and he most rudely persisted in holding his place to the utter exclusion of everything else. The moon was an early one, and from time to time Eve cautiously pushed her tangled head from under the coverlet, and peered anxiously through the open portal of her bower. The clearing was always tenanted by the dancing shadows of the foliage alone; but there were deep shades between tree-stems which might have hidden an army within a stone's throw. From stalking birds and lizards, she knew how easy it was to creep up silently under cover, and so naturally she could make out invisible eyes watching her from the gloomy recesses, whenever she tried to do so; and what is more, she did it, inflicting self- torture with a persistency worthy of her sex.

During the day-time she had not feared Adam in the least; but at night he might well (for aught she knew) be another creature, and as she was not familiar with his ways during the darkness,she had no contempt for them.

And so the night, which she had always loathed, had gathered in unto i tself another terror, and Eve with much consistency at last buried her head for good, a nd cried and shuddered herself to sleep.

In the morning slie awoke free from her tremors, but a prey to new anxiety. She got up and looked about the clearing. There was no Adam in sight, or trace that he had been there since his precipitate flight.

The little green parrot came up for a matutinal greeting and was pettishly thrust aside. Eve had advanced past the stage of parrots. Her mind was set on an unfeathered biped now. She wanted Adam, wanted him badly; and Adam very rudely abstained from coming to her. She had not the patience to wait and see if he would turn up in the course of time. She remembered his powers of natation, and feared he would go away and leave her for good. And so she, made up her mind to go and sleek him. You see she had had constancy forced upon her by the lack of another equally shall we say valuable object, on whom to bestow her attention. It was aut C‘sar, aut nullus.

So she turned her back on the clearing and strode rapidly down a forest path. The trees were sopped with dew, the clammy morning mists clung heavily to the vegetation, and the going was very unpleasant. Her sleek limbs were slapped by the wet foliage, and chilled with a perpetual shower-bath; both of which she had a cat-like objection to in general. But now she noticed not the discomforts. The strong interest of her goal rose superior to all of them.

Adam, honest fellow, was humped down on the hot gleaming beach, chewing the cud of bitter meditation. Like others of his sex, he had burnt his fingers over a woman, and as many men have done before, and as many thousands will do again, he was firmly determined to have nothing further to do with her. He was wishing most sincerely that he had been contented with minding his own business on his own proper island, and he glanced with rue at its wooded securities and at his blistered fingers alternately. But there was no means of reaching the one, and, so far as he knew, no method of curing the other. For you see he was new to the game: he had never been burnt before, and didn't know that in a few days he would not only be well again, but would have the skin over the wound well toughened against future attacks.

Many new allotments of Adam's brain had been opened out during the last few days, and one of them was at this moment assisting him to speculate for the first time about his future which was one of the pleasant ironies of the Fates, for a very inky future it seemed to him.

He was doomed to remain on the island for always however long that might be and the exchange from his own domain seemed in every way a change for the worse. Eve had no attractions for him. The fishing, so far as he had tried it, was not to be compared with his own. Those tasty monstrosities with red fins and varicoloured backs were to be seen nowhere. The oysters had all got pearls in them, and pearls damaged his teeth. And the hunting was dangerous too. The local patrol of sharks knew him not, and therefore had no respect for his powers with the pointed stake; and so a lengthy course of disciplinary warfare lay before him whether he liked it or not. And add to all this, like other people unused to travelling, he was suffering from nostalgia. He had always fancied his own shallow cave more than any other resting-place; but it was not till now that he had lost it, that he appreciated the full essence of its sweet homeliness.

The sum of all these things bore heavily upon him; and Adam bowed his head over his upraised knees, and groaned aloud.

He was groaning mournfully when Eve came up, and the sounds startled her. For a while she did not discover herself, and stood watching from the shelter of the trees; but seeing him pop his blistered fingers into his mouth, she thought she had a clue to his dejection. He was in pain. Yes, that was it. She

had burnt her own digits many times, and knew exactly how it was. So making a plast er of leaves, and anointing it with unguent ready to hand on a castor-oil bush, she went out on the beach, and walked towards him.

Her movements were always cat- like, as a professional huntress's must be, and consequently Adam did not perceive her approach till she had gone round and spoken to him. But the sight of her roused him. Clambering to his feet he slouched backwards a dozen paces, and faced her with bent shoulders and glowering brow. She advanced, holding out her remedy, and saying that it would alleviate his pain. He retreated doggedly, looking upon her threateningly the while. He did not understand her words; he was ignorant of the nature of her peace-offering; and he wanted to have no further intercourse with her of any sort or kind. Being unable to express this verbally, he was doing his best to make her understand it from his looks, which were, to say the least of them, ugly.

Eve hesitated in her advance. She was beginning to fear this man again after all; but her quicker wit showed her the sentences he was trying to impart, and she felt that if once the misconception was removed, all would go smoothly again. But how to make him understand that she.meant well, that she wished to repair the accidental injury of yesterday? Eve considered awhile; and her bosom began to heave more rapidly, for Adam's demeanour was becoming more unpleasant, every moment. She was getting badly seared, She had half turned to fly when a thought flashed on her, and turning to him again, she put the plaster of leaves and oil on to two of her own slender fingers, and held it there firmly.

Adam looked on at first dully. He didn't want to understand, and was not going to try to do so. But comprehension was forced upon him whether be liked it or no, and his brow began involuntarily to clear. His mind was wavering. The woman was signing to him that the charm she held in her hand would take away the pain from his wounded fingers. He grasped that readily enough. But would it not be better to endure twice the agony rather than let her come near him again?

His blistered fingers brushed accidentally against his leg, and the ensuing twinge decided him. He slouched sullenly forward, and thrust out the damaged members towards her.

Eve's surgery might be rude, but it was effective; and as her hand was light and gave him no pain during the dressing, he got relief at once, and suffered her to complete the task without interference.

When she had finished, he did not bestow so much as a grateful glance by way of payment, but turned away and once more started to leave her. Gratitude is not a thing one learns in solitude, and Adam was still of the opinion that it would not be good for him to cultivate the lady's further acquaintance.

But Eve thought otherwise. She feared him not now, and so going after him, laid a soft detaining hand upon his arm.

The effect was magical. He wheeled round and faced her. Astonishment and delight were fighting for the mastery within him, and had ousted all other passions on the instant. It was the first time he had felt the touch of fingers other than his own, and it had thrilled him to the marrow. He even looked at the lucky arm in search of an outward mark, and seeing none, began to have a new understanding thrust upon him.

Eve saw the change on the instant, and she too was filled with joy. Smiling lustrously upon him, she shook back her hair, and sat down with a happy sigh upon a patch of sea-moss, making room for him to take his place beside her. He did it promptly, and fell to stroking her sleek arm with his hand, with his cheek, with his own arm the very thing that she hungered for him to do without further invitation. And finally Eve lifted Adam's arm, and putting it round her own neck, nestled up to him in the most matter-of-fact way in the world, without a blush, and without a trace of confusion. It was the enjoyment of innocence. And from that mechanical commencement, which produced physical pleasure, they gradually evolved into that intercourse of mind which produces the sentiment styled love.

A language learnt in childhood, or babyhood, comes easily, and, whether it be pure speech or a dialect, usually retains its hold until death-time. And other languages may be picked up whilst one's years are tender with more or less of facility, for the mind, and all the elaborate mechanical items of the speaking apparatus, are then most capable of taking unto themselves strong impressions. But as it is with folk who try to acquire a foreign tongue after that they have arrived at years of maturity, so it was with Adam only more so. For he was a man grown before he had even attempted to utter an articulate sound; and thus his speech when it did come forth was halting and laboured. If he could only have whistled his remarks, as the indigenes of the Canaries do, he would have been comfortable; for he could whistle fluently. But though he made attempts to pipe his ideas into readable form, Eve neither understood him nor made any effort to do so, and he was obliged to have recourse to the more vulgar method of explanation which obtains amongst the world's majority.

The necessity of acquiring the art of conversation had impressed itself strongly upon him during that memorable afternoon down on the beach when he had discovered that it was no longer good to live alone. A man when he relinquishes his hermitage must talk if he can by any human means manage it. But it was long before Adam could get his tongue round even the simplest phrases, though he tried prodigiously hard to master its waywardness.

Unlike the parrot, whose oratory always increased by whole sentences at a time, Adam, after the manner of a man who finds himself suddenly plunged amongst the bewilderments of an entirely strange tongue, first committed to memory a scrappy list of substantives, and made use of them as occasion demanded. When he said "bird" he got a bird to eat; and when in the course of a sentence Eve mentioned the word "wood," he started out towards the forest with intent to gather fuel. But communication by this primitive means is limited, and one's ideas are liable to misconception; so Adam gradually acquired command over a verb or two of varied tense and person, and then matters went more freely, and the grammar and the other parts of speech came tumbling in to him of their own accord. For, mind you, Eve's vocabulary was an extremely limited one, so that, after all, there was not very much to learn. But what there was of it served her purpose well enough. With unrestricted use of, say, four hundred and fifty words, you can do a great deal if you are not timid about employing the figure known as paraphrase, and if your ideas soar but little beyond the things immediately connected with your own creature comforts.

At first the instructress revelled in her self-imposed task. Adam was all in all to her. She lived only to be his helpmate. His slightest nod it was a pleasure to obey. Her whole being was wrapped up in his welfare. She would patiently repeat a word or a phrase for an. hour together till his unaccustomed lips had mastered its shape, and then she would throw her soft arms around his neck, and kiss him and tell him how clever he was all of which Adam duly appreciated and remunerated her for. And during the time of a moon's rise and wane, they lived in one ecstacy of happiness.

But then the matter-of- factness of their everyday life began to grow up and dilute its poetry, and their demeanour towards one another gradually changed. Though the first glamour had worn off, they were fond of each other still, for you see neither of them were blasé to this sort of thing. She had not flirted with other men; he had never run after a single other girl: which makes them almost unique amongst married couples. And when they sat down vis-à-vis to one another at meals, they really found it felt strange for a very long time, for, unlike the person in Mr. Kipling's book, neither of them had ever "been there before." But if you only give them time enough, even the most innocent pair will get accustomed to this sort of thing at last, and used to one another's ways, and in time they will acquire an insight into each other's weaknesses and failings.

And so by the time that the moon's crescent had thinned down to extinction, Eve had discovered that though as a rule Adam was good-humoured to a degree, there were occasions when his temper was a trifle uncertain, as temper is bound to be when it has never been schooled or governed. Her endearments would occasionally verge upon torments, which he would endure placidly enough for a time; but if she persisted in them too long, his brows would begin to lower, and his eyes to glint ominously. For a long time she did not know what would be the next development. She accepted these as omens of coming storms, and desisted from whatever she was doing to irritate him, and felt sorry for having commenced it.

Adam, too, found that Eve's great failing was laziness. The more work he was willing to do, for the simple payment of caresses and lavish thanks, the more he might do. So long as she was able to deck herself out with floral wreaths and garlands, and lie and bask, she was supremely happy. Birds he could not catch, lizards he knew not where to find, but she took to a fish diet amazingly when she found it was to be had without trouble, and instructed Adam in the art of cooking, so that even that labour was taken off her hands.

They seemed to have exchanged natures. She no longer took constitutionals, and the paths of her domain through being untrodden were becoming overgrown; and he, who was so short a time ago wont to spend the greater part of his day in dreamless far niente, was now a universal provider, constantly on the tramp and toil.

Now Adam saw no just reason why be should be the only working member of the household, and so as the days went on he protested more and more against it. For awhile Eve smiled on him and caressed him, and postured before him in all her choicest array; and he yielded to her blandishments, and meekly fished for two, and then did the kitchen work afterwards. But when one takes one's salary out in kind of this description, a surfeit is apt to pall; and so after awhile, Eve's kisses and endearments began to grow stale, and when such currency was held out, it aroused the black look. This Adam observed always had the effect of making Eve bestir herself; and so as he had a theory that the labours of their daily life should be equally shared, the ominous face began to be put on more frequently as Eve's disinclination to return to the old cycle of toil increased.

All this while he was learning to speak and understand her language; and though Eve's formal lessons gradually decreased in length and frequency, as the novelty and therefore the pleasure of teaching wore off, she was constantly chattering to him and to herself, and so his progress never stopped. But it was slow. He found the uncouth noises which represented ideas in articulate shape hard to acquire; and his tongue often played him tricks by uttering sounds wholly different from those intended. And so his speech was halting and laboured, and Eve at times waxed sarcastic and derisive in her superiority. Adam might be painstaking, but he was undoubtedly slow, and to her mind unintelligent; and her nature was one which could admire nothing short of brilliance.

Being without experience, she made no allowance for the huge disadvantage under which he laboured; and consequently, what she was pleased to consider his dense stupidity irritated her. And so she turned her tongue into a whip, partly to goad him into more vigorous and effective effort, and partly through sheer spite and vexation.

Adam was not a supersensitive man, and he bore a great deal without retort. But as the hide of a rhinoceros is not invulnerable, if you prick deeply enough, so there was a limit even to his heavy endurance; and when Eve's gibings grew too cruelly sharp and bitter, his brows would begin to descend, and a savage light to gleam evilly from the black depths of his eyes. Eve did not know exactly what would come next, and so, as she feared the unknown, she always stopped short at or near this point. But as immunity from harm rendered her braver, and as familiarity with Adam bred contempt for him, she verged further and further towards the critical line. Her satire was not very refined, nor was her wit delicate; but under the circumstances it was of the most telling kind. Adam would not have appreciated less rough-hewn words and hints and actions so deeply. Her little cruelties were just the sort to go home to him.

And so matters went on till they reached a climax; that is to say, till she irritated the long-suffering man past endurance.

It came in the evening cool, which had followed on a hot baking afternoon. Eve was lying back as usual on her mossy couch, combing out her yellow hair with long slender fingers, and amusing herself with teasing him from time to time, and toying with the broken-winged parrot. Adam was squatted close by, with arms clasped round his knees, watching her with glowering face; and although she glanced covertly at him ever and anon to note the progress of his wrath, she took no direct notice of his presence.

She was baiting him through the medium of a third individual - which is an ingenious device not reserved to an Eden alone. She had the parrot perched on an upraised knee, and was engaged in adding a new sentence to the disjointed string which the bird knew already.

"Logs are silent, so are fools," she cooed time after time; and the parrot would repeat "Logs are silent" over and over again, but could be induced to add no more.

The words were a trifle ambiguous; but Adam felt them to be pregnant with insult - as indeed it was intended that he should. And he looked more sourly every time they were reiterated. But he did not move. He sat still with his arms clasped round his legs, and watched. He had privately fixed a limit to his endurance, and that had not yet been reached. If it did not come, he would cool down again as he had done already oftentimes before. But if it did - well, then he should take action, though in what direction he had not yet decided. The impulse of the moment must guide him.

If Eve had known what was going on in her companion's mind she would doubtless have put a period to her amusement with some suddenness. But Adam was much-enduring, and she had seen him look like that often before. So she went on with her employment.

"Come, show us how clever you are. 'Logs are silent, so are fools.'"

"Logs are silent - fools."

The bird had caught up another word. Eve clapped her hands gleefully, and took a sly glance at Adam. He had not changed. She felt sure she could goad him further with impunity. So she repeated the whole phrase again, articulating each word with slow deliberation. The little green bird shook out its feathers. Eve preened them with a taper finger, and coaxed it to make a fresh effort.

"Logs are silent - so - fools."

Adam's hands were unlocked from his knees, and were clenching and unclenching themselves slowly amongst the grass; but Eve, excited with success, did not notice. She sat up, and perching the bird on her wrist, stroked its emerald head, and kept repeating the lesson. As if struck with some dim foreboding, the parrot refused for a Iong time to utter another sound; but the coaxing finger

was patient and at last the words came.

"Logs are silent, so are -"

The bird hesitated, turned a beady eye upon Adam, and then croaked out -"Fools!"

Fatal triumph. The man's strong hand shot out, seized the mechanical scoffer, and killed it in the same way he killed the fish he caught in the lagoon.

Then he spat out the head on to the grass, flung the fluttering green body angrily away, and turned to face Eve again.

She had felt no horror at the death of her pet. Mad unreasoning anger dispossessed all her other passions, and it was flaring out of her eyes with a far wilder, fiercer flame than that which had smouldered so long in Adam's. Before he knew what was taking place, she had flung herself upon him, had borne him to the ground, and clung there on the top of him, kicking, scratching, biting like an incarnate fury. She had no remorse, no restraint over herself. Everything that was tigerish in her nature had come into hot life, and she was doing all that lay in her power to wound and harm. It was not for the bird's sake; it was an unreasoning madness that possessed her, such as can never come to a mind that is under any cultured restraint.

Stunned mentally and physically by the suddenness of her onslaught, Adam lay passive under the first attack; and even when pain brought him sharply to his senses, he was so unconscious of his own superior power, that he did not bring it into use all at once. But as her fury increased - being whet by the sight and smell of blood, one must suppose - so did his resistance strengthen, till at last, locking his arms round her lithe sleek body, with a mighty effort he rolled over and found himself on the top.

Then began retribution. Adam knew nothing of the chivalry which leads one to spare a fallen enemy, and Eve expected no mercy either, for she writhed and struggled as fiercely as before; for one was quite as great a savage as the other. Adam's evilest passions had hitherto only been aroused against sharks, and so naturally they were relentless. When he was sufficiently wroth he tried to slay - and he usually did slay. He had no idea of moderation in punishment. Heretofore he had acquitted. Now he designed to kill, being far too highly wrought to imagine any middle course. So, regardless of her tearings and scratchings, he clutched Eve's throat with one hand and hit hard and heavily with the other, till she ceased resistance, and lay quite still. And then he showed his superiority over the savage of civilization by maltreating her inanimate form no further. Being unfamiliar with the conditions of unconsciousness, he concluded she was dead and so feeling his just vengeance justly satiated, he got up from the body, and went and stood against a tree at a short distance away.

Eve lay on the short turf with her rounded limbs thrown at random, still as the parrot. Her golden bair was spread out on the green like a patch of sunlight. Her face was calm, and not yet disfigured by bruises. She looked as if she were in an ordinary sleep. Almost - not quite. No, there was a difference in this sleep.

Adam stared at his handiwork rather glumly. Her comely body was streaked here and there with blood, which stain, he remembered with a little flash of satisfaction, came from his own veins, and not from hers. She had bitten and scratched - he was marked with red from face to foot in token of it. He had only employed his fist like a leaden weight.

He recollected that he also might have used teeth and talons as well, and was glad now for his forbearance. Indeed, now that it was over, he was sorry for having used his strength upon her at all. But it was only because he should miss her a little as a companion. His conscience did not prick him in the least. With a sense of right and wrong that was new to him, he saw nothing to blame in what he had done. She began by tormenting him; then she attacked him like a fury. The situation had been thrust upon him. It was all her own fault, every bit.

Yet, in spite of this clear argument, Adam felt far from comfortable. He told himself that he had liked Eve much from the very first, and had continued to like her up till the very last moment; and then, with gloomy introspection, he began to find how deeply her memory was still entwined with his life.

And now she was dead, and past recall! At present she looked much as he had always known her, but a horrid change would set in directly. He had killed things before, and knew only too well what happened to a body when vitality had left it. In these hot climates the last alteration soon commences. In a day at the outside Eve would be no longer lovely to look upon. And she was lovely, he told himself. He had never realized it before, but as he gazed now upon her recumbent form, he knew that it was the most beautiful thing his eyes had ever seen.

Adam's trunk and arms were covered with wounds, many of them trickling redly; his head showed angry raw patches where the hair had been uprooted; his features were swollen and distorted: but he seemed conscious of no physical pain. He was shifting his weight restlessly from one leg to the other, and staring at Eve with knitted brow. He was experiencing the first great grief of his life.

And so he stayed till the sun had dipped behind the tree-tops, and was hovering redly over the distant plain of ocean. There were a few fleecy clouds overhead dyed ruddy with the declining beams, and the reflection from them tinged Eve's pallid limbs with pink. It almost looked as if she were coming to life again. But Adam made up his mind not to be deceived. He knew that she was dead, and with instinctive good taste set about paying last services to her body. Going to the bower, he fetched the tuft-lined coverlet, and came and stood beside her again for one last look. Then he would cover her decently from sight, and go away and leave the glade for ever.

He stooped down to arrange the shroud, when his eye lit upon a fly that had settled upon her forehead. He shuddered, and groaned aloud. Already!

Then he lowered his hand and brushed the fly away. And then he started back with a great and piercing cry.

She had moved under his touch. She was dead no longer. She was returning to life again, and to him.

He watched and saw her bosom gently pulsing, watched and saw the colour returning to her cheeks - not the reflected pink of the sky, but the tint of generous blood coursing once more through its own proper channels. And then he heard a long-drawn sobbing sigh, and thought it the sweetest music his ears had ever listened to.

She was alive; he had been mistaken: he was not doomed to be alone. Weak with loss of blood, emotion had sustained him before; and now emotion of another order staggered him. He felt dizzy, faint, and sank to the ground with everything swimming in circles around him. But he collected himself with an effort, and raised himself upon one hand and gazed at her afresh. The throes of fresh life were passing through her; her limbs were straightening themselves; her eyelids had begun to lift; her lips were moving dryly.

This last sign set Adam's wits working afresh. He was conscious of being thirsty himself: doubtless she was suffering in similar fashion. He started to his feet and tore down to the stream. But he did not drink. The seconds necessary to satisfy his own needs could not be wasted. He drew water in the cup of his two hands, carried it up to where she lay, and let it trickle slowly into her mouth, watching intently for the result. Her lips moved stiffly, as though she were trying to masticate some hard morsel, and she sighed once more, this time with more contentment. He went again for water, and again and again, always forgetting his own burning needs in his eagerness to serve and revivify her. And at last his care was rewarded. She opened her eyes to the full, and evidently recognized him. He smiled tenderly, feeling almost overcome with gladness. She, on the other hand, frowned, and made a movement - a very slight movement - away from him. He noted it, and becoming eloquent for the first time, bade her have no further fear. He would not injure her again; he deeply regretted what he had done, and made no reference to provocation received. With a clever instinct he owned mea culpa, thinking it would please her.

She looked doubtfully at him for awhile, evidently weighing a heavy question in her mind; and then, holding out a languid hand, smiled gently and nodded. He took the proffered member, and kissed her taper fingers as courteously as any knight of old could have done; and then, considering the treaty of peace made and signed, bestirred himself for her further welfare. With a tuft of damp moss he gently removed as far as possible all the stains of combat from her body, and then taking her up in his arms, he laid her on the couch of leaves inside the bower, and covered her with the quilt.

Being able to think of no other service to render her, he had turned to go and attend to his own needs, which were pressing, when she called him back. She wanted an orange. Swiftly he sped, to the grove across the brook, plucked a couple of yellow spheres, peeling them as he returned. And then, after handing them to her, he rushed off into the woods and ran a mile to another grove where the fruit was finer, and brought a fresh supply which he thought would please her better. She thanked him, and thinking of no other wants, bade him go and attend to himself.

Adam went down to the brook and washed and dressed his wounds as well as he was able; and then not feeling equal to a walk to the sea, and the struggles of fishing, he made a vegetarian meal off matter which was to be culled in the immediate neighbourhood. Night had fallen by this, so after that the demands of his appetite were satisfied, be went back to the bower; and finding Eve snugged up under her quilt, and to all appearances asleep, be lay down too, and was quickly in the land of dreams beside her.

Adam had gone to rest very much in peace with all the world, and he woke up with the same quiet feeling strong in him.

To his surprise and astonishment, the first thing that fell upon his waking eyes was Eve's figure creeping stealthily out of the door.

His first impulse was to call after her; yet he not only stifled this, but also, when she got outside and turned again to look at him, he shut his eyes again and feigned sleep. His action was, as it were, half involuntary, and he himself was surprised by it. Indeed, he had almost a mind to get up there and then and follow her. But Eve's movements had been so peculiar, that he resolved to wait for the present where he was and not interfere with her.

The walls of the bower were gapped in places, and looking through the trellis of wands and flowers, he could often catch a glimpse of her. She was walking hither and thither, across and across the glade, apparently in search of something. Again Adam had half a mind to go out and assist her in her quest. But again he restrained himself, With the thought that if she had wanted his assistance, she would not have scrupled to have awakened him and asked for it. So he continued to watch unobtrusively. Presently she stooped and picked up a large sharp-edged bivalve shell, and then a short length of heavy stick. Dropping them again for a moment, she came once more to the opening of the bower, and saw Adam to appearances fast asleep. So she turned again, and plucking a thin flexible liane, sat herself down on the turf.

Adam watched her movements curiously. She proceeded with much care to snip small fragments from the shell near its hinged end, and then taking the liane, lashed it firmly on to the handle.

She was making an axe. He had never seen one before, but he guessed its use, and began to have a foreboding of the purpose to which it was intended to be put. So he continued to lie still and watch, waiting the development of events.

At last Eve had completed her weapon, and rose again to her feet. She swung it viciously through the air a time or two, and then smiling a cruel quiet smile, moved stealthily towards the bower.

The roof was not high enough to admit her standing upright, and so she entered, crawling with cat-like caution, upon her hands and knees. She was a little stiff from the struggle of the day before, but in no way materially injured, and she felt possessed of ample strength to fulfil her purpose, Adam was asleep. She could strike without danger to herself, and he would not know whence the fatal blow came till after it had fallen.

She knelt beside him and raised the clumsy weapon above her head with both hands, fixing her glance upon the spot she intended to strike, a tiny mole that grew in the very centre of his forehead. The rude axe was poised on high, and in another moment would have fallen. But of a sudden the sleeping man sprang up endowed with full wakefulness, and with a shriek she turned and fled, dropping the axe to the ground in her terror.

Adam grasped its handle as he sprang to his feet and followed. Her treachery had aroused all the evil spirit in him again, and the lex talionis was naturally the code by which he would judge her if he could come near enough. But Eve was fleeter of foot, and he expected her to escape.

Eve thought, too, that her wild flight would carry her away from his clutches, but she had not reckoned upon accidents. She had hardly gained one of the winding forest paths at the other side of the glade, when her foot caught on a projecting root, and she stumbled and almost fell. Before she could recover speed, he was close upon her. Expecting no mercy, she turned, cat- like and defiant, standing back against a tall palm, with body bent, and one arm sheltering her face.

Adam stood before her with axe upraised. He was very much inclined to slay, and he judged that she deserved her fate most thoroughly; but remembering his recent experience, he stayed his hand in mid-air, and hesitated.

They stood there panting and glaring at one another like a pair of wild beasts; and the minutes flew by, and neither made a movement.

At, last Adam's mind was made up. He would beat her with a weapon that would sting indeed, but do no deadly injury, and turned away to tear down a stick suitable for his purpose.

The moment was Eve's opportunity. Facing round, she ran up the rough surface of the tree-stem nimbly as a squirrel, mocking him with words and laughter as she went.

She had deceived him again - circumvented him when the game lay in his own hands. Adam's rage boiled up afresh, and he tried to follow. He had never climbed a palm before, but fury aided him now, and he got, twenty feet from the ground. But there a great shell peeled off under his weight, and he fell back heavily on to the turf.

Eve had been silent whilst she saw him attempting the ascent, and was making fierce preparations to resist his landing. But when, from her perch, she beheld his overthrow, she mocked him afresh - mocked and laughed till she was hoarse - feeling sure that she was safe, since Adam could not possibly get at her. Moreover, she hoped that if she kept on lashing him with her tongue, he would get tired of the one-sided conflict, and go away and rid her of his presence, when she would have opportunity to discover some snugger retreat.

But Adam had no intention of even tacitly owning that he was beaten. He was very hurt both in mind and body, and he intended to see the thing out to a conclusion either one way or another. So he sat him down by the foot of the tree, saying nothing, but biding his time. There were plantains close at hand to supply his needs, and he could stay there a month if necessary, till she was starved out.

She might laugh, but he would win.

In this amiable frame of mind Adam passed the day; breakfasting, lunching, and dining off plantains au naturel - a fare which he loathed - but never wavering from his guard. Eve he couldn't see, as she was hidden by the tremulous foliage which crowned the stem; but even after she had ceased giving mouth he knew she was there, for the palm stood alone, and there was no way of escape except by flying, and he was pretty sure she lacked the power of flight, or he would have found it out before. She was fond enough of showing what she could do, as he remembered bitterly.

The morning passed; the afternoon burnt itself through, hot and scorching; the evening shadows closed in; the sunset and its after-glow died away, and night fell cool and velvetly: and still Adam sentinelled the tree- foot. If he had thought soberly about the matter, he would have remembered that little idiosyncrasy of E