The Island Queen. Robert Michael Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ indeed, and as little did poor mother dream of such a fate,” returned Dominick, “when she let us all go so readily, on the understanding that we should give father no rest until we had got him to give up business, quit Java for ever, and return home.”

      “Dear old mother!” said Pauline, “I wish—oh! I wish so much that we had not left her, even though it was to be for only a few months. She must be so lonely, with no one to talk to—”

      “You forget Pina.”

      “Forget—what?”

      “The cat,” returned Otto, unable to repress a smile, which rose in spite of the ready tear that dimmed his eye at the mere mention of his mother. “You know the cat is her great resource—a sort of safety-valve. Sometimes, when I’ve been listening to her, lying on the rug at her feet half asleep, I’ve heard her talk to that cat as if it really was a human being, and tell it all about her little affairs and daily troubles and worries in quite a confidential tone. I’ve taken it into my head that that’s mother’s way of thinking aloud—she thinks at the cat, for company: and to do the brute justice, it does its best to accommodate her. I’ve seen it sit and stare at her by the half-hour at a time, and give a little purr or a meaiow now and then as if it wanted to speak. I’m quite sure it thinks, and wonders no doubt what idle, useless work it is to click knitting-needles together by the hour.”

      “Dear me, Otto,” said Pauline, with a laugh, “I had no idea that you could think so much about anything.”

      “Think!” exclaimed the boy, indignantly; “d’you suppose that it’s only stern-browed, long-legged fellows like Dom there who can think? Why, I think, and think, sometimes, to such an extent that I nearly think myself inside out! But, Pina, you don’t know half as much about motherkin as I do, for when you are with her she usually forgets herself, I can see, and talks only about the things that interest you; whereas, when there’s nobody present but me, she counts me for nothing, and lets me do pretty much what I like—because no doubt she thinks I’ll do that whether she lets me or not—but she’s wrong, for I love her far more than she thinks; and then it’s when I’m quiet and she forgets me, I fancy, or thinks I’m asleep, that she comes out strong at the cat.”

      “Darling mother!” said Pauline, musingly. “I can see her now, in my mind, with her neat black cap and smooth braided hair, and gold spectacles, as plain as if she were sitting before me.”

      “I’m sorry to destroy the vision, Pina, on my own account as well as yours,” observed Dominick, “but it behoves us now to look for a night’s lodging, for the sun is sinking fast, and it would not be pleasant to lie down on the bare ground shelterless, fine though the climate is. Come, we will return to the place where we landed, and search for a cave or a bit of overhanging rock.”

      The best sleeping-place that they had up to that time discovered was undoubtedly the grove in which they had found the graves of the shipwrecked crew, but, as Otto truly remarked, it would probably result in uncomfortable dreams if they were to go to sleep in a burying-ground, alongside of a skeleton.

      Accordingly they returned to the beach, and sought for some time among the débris of the boat for anything useful that might have been washed up, but found nothing. Then they went along-shore in the direction of the wreck which had raised their hopes so high that day when first seen, but nothing suitable was discovered until they rounded a low point of rocks, when Pauline came to a sudden pause.

      “Look! a golden cave!” she exclaimed, pointing eagerly to a grassy spot which was canopied by feathery palms, and half enclosed by coral rocks, where was a cavern into which the sinking sun streamed at the moment with wonderful intensity.

      Their home for that night obviously lay before them, but when they entered it and sat down, their destitution became sadly apparent. No beds to spread, no food to prepare, nothing whatever to do but lie down and sleep.

      “No matter, we’re neither hungry nor thirsty,” said Dominick, with an air of somewhat forced gaiety, “and our clothes are getting dry. Come, sister, you must be weary. Lie down at the inner side of the cave, and Otto and I, like faithful knights, will guard the entrance. I—I wish,” he added, in a graver tone, and with some hesitation, “that we had a Bible, that we might read a verse or two before lying down.”

      “I can help you in that,” said his sister, eagerly. “I have a fair memory, you know, and can repeat a good many verses.”

      Pauline repeated the twenty-third Psalm in a low, sweet voice. When she had finished, a sudden impulse induced Dominick, who had never prayed aloud before, to utter a brief but fervent prayer and thanksgiving. Then the three lay down in the cave, and in five minutes were sound asleep.

      Thus appropriately did these castaways begin their sojourn on a spot which was destined to be their home for a long time to come.

      Chapter Three.

      Explorations and Discoveries

      As the sun had bathed the golden cave when our castaways went to sleep, so it flooded their simple dwelling when they awoke.

      “Then,” exclaims the intelligent reader, “the sun must have risen in the west!”

      By no means, good reader. Whatever man in his wisdom, or weakness, may do or say, the great luminaries of day and night hold on the even tenor of their way unchanged. But youth is a wonderful compound of strength, hope, vitality, carelessness, and free-and-easy oblivion, and, in the unconscious exercise of the last capacity, Pauline and her brothers had slept as they lay down, without the slightest motion, all through that night, all through the gorgeous sunrise of the following morning, all through the fervid noontide and the declining day, until the setting sun again turned their resting-place into a cave of gold.

      The effect upon their eyelids was such that they winked, and awoke with a mighty yawn. We speak advisedly. There were not three separate awakenings and three distinct yawns; no, the rousing of one caused the rousing of the others in succession so rapidly that the yawns, commencing with Pauline’s treble, were prolonged, through Otto’s tenor down to Dominick’s bass, in one stupendous monotone or slide, which the last yawner terminated in a groan of contentment. Nature, during the past few days, had been doubly defrauded, and she, having now partially repaid herself, allowed her captives to go free with restored vigour. There was, however, enough of the debt still unpaid to induce a desire in the captives to return of their own accord to the prison-house of Oblivion, but the desire was frustrated by Otto, who, sitting up suddenly and blinking at the sun with owlish gravity, exclaimed—

      “Well, I never! We’ve only slept five minutes!”

      “The sun hasn’t set yet!”

      Dominick, replying with a powerful stretch and another yawn, also raised himself on one elbow and gazed solemnly in front of him. A gleam of intelligence suddenly crossed his countenance.

      “Why, boy, when we went to sleep the sun was what you may call six feet above the horizon; now it is twelve feet if it is an inch, so that if it be still setting, it must be setting upwards—a phenomenon of which the records of astronomical research make no mention.”

      “But it is setting?” retorted Otto, with a puzzled look, “for I never heard of your astronomical searchers saying that they’d ever seen the sun rise in the same place where it sets.”

      “True, Otto, and the conclusion I am forced to is that we have slept right on from sunset to sunset.”

      “So, then, we’ve lost a day,” murmured СКАЧАТЬ