Part 10 (1/2)

Our hut was about three-quarters of athe very first thing the girls and I did was to go down to the beach arm-in-arm and have a delicious swim

They very soon became expert swimo out spearing and netting fish,mullet We nearly always had fish of so shell-fish; and ould send the wo distances for wild honey Water was the only liquid we drank at breakfast, and with it Ya dish of lily-buds and roots We used to stea alh--in primitive ovens, which were merely adapted ants' nests Thefor our house We occasionally received quantities of wild figs froe for shell and other ornaments which they did not possess I also discovered a cereal very like barley, which I ground up and , there being no civilised appliances of any kind Food was never boiled

Froather that ere as happy as civilised beings could possibly be under the circumstances Nevertheless--and my heart aches as I recall those times--we had periodical fits of despondency, which filled us with acute and intolerable agony

These periods caularity almost once a week At such ti s, and acrobatic perfors (the girls taught ay The fits of despondency were usuallysea for hours, and had perhaps at last caught sight of a distant sail without being able to attract the attention of those on board The girls, too, suffered froo away froth of time They never had complete confidence even in my friendly natives Naturally ere inseparable, we three We went for long raarden At first ratitude for what I had done, but I earnestly begged of them never even to mention the word to me The little I had done, I told them, was my bare and obvious duty, and was no more than any other man worthy of the name, would have done

In our more hopeful irls would dwell upon the thrill of exciteh the civilised world, when their story and mine should first be made known to the public

For they felt certain their adventures were quite unique in the annals of civilisation, and they loved to think they would have an opportunity of ”lionising” me e should return to Europe They would not hear me when I protested that such a course would, fronified--even painful

Every day we kept a good look-out for passing shi+ps; and from twenty to forty catamarans were always stationed on the beach in readiness to take us out to sea should there be any hope of a rescue As lish was at this tiirls took it upon theress under their vivacious tuition They would promptly correct me in the pronunciation of certain vohen I read aloud frolo-French Testament I have already ly interested in the records of my daily life, sensations, &c, which I had written in _blood_ in the ins of my little Bible whilst on the island in Ti quill pens in plenty froeese; but the experiirls, as I have already hinted, had wonderful es which they had learnt at school Blanche, the elder girl, would give her sister and myself lessons in elocution; and I should like to say a word to teachers and children on the enor to es from historical or classical works It is, of course, very unlikely that any one who reads these lines will be cast away as ere, but still one never knohat the future has in store; and I have known pioneers and prospectors who have ventured into the reive striking testi or recite in a loud voice

Soing whatever best suited the voice; or ould all join together in a rollicking glee One day, I remember, I started off with--

”A notre heureux sejour,”

but almost immediately I realised how ridiculously inappropriate the words were Still, I struggled on through the first verse, but to irls joined in with ”God Save the Queen,” which has exactly the same air The incident is one that should appeal to all British people, including even her Most Gracious Majesty herself As the girls' voices rose, half sobbingly, in the old fa person, tears fairly ran down their fair but sad young faces, and I could not help being struck with the pathos of the scene

But all things considered, these were really happy days for all of us, at any rate in comparison with those we had previously experienced We had by this time quite an orchestra of reed flutes and the fiddles aforesaid, whose strings were of gut procured from the native wild-cat--a very little fellow, by the way, about the size of a fair-sized rat; I found hireat thieves, and only roareat nue an easy entrance, yet confronted the outgoing cat with a formidable _chevaux-de- frise_ The bait I used was meat in an almost putrid condition

I could not handle the prisoners in the ely; I therefore forked theed perpetual warfare against the native rats The skin of these cats was beautifully soft, and altogether they were quite leopards in , the more so in that their flesh was almost the only meat dish that had not the eternal flavour of the eucalyptus leaf, which all our other ”joints” possessed The girls never knew that they were eating cats, to say nothing about rats In order to save their feelings, I told them that both ”dishes” were squirrels!

My hair at this tiirls' own, so it is no wonder that it provided bows for the fiddles My co tresses, using combs which I had reat source of joy to Yamba, as now fully convinced that I would settle down aely affected by our singing Any kind of civilisedwas to them anathema What they liked best was the harsh uproarand chanting that acco of the dingoes! They were sincere, hardly compliirls had of being left alone

Whenever I went off with the e ofafter them I also persuaded the natives to keep so, particularly when they were about to hold a cannibal feast, so that the girls were never shocked by such a fearful sight Certainly they had known of cannibalism in their old camp, but I told them that my own people were a superior race of natives, ere not addicted to this loathso since lost count of the days, ays set aside one day in every seven and recognised it as Sunday, e held a kind of service in our spacious hut Besides the girls, Yamba, and myself, only our oomen-folk were admitted, because I was careful never to attempt to proselytise any of the natives, or wean theious in the very best sense of the term, and they knew the Old and New Testaments alht ion which I had not known previously Blanche would read aloud the es from the Bible; and even as I write I can recall her pale, earnest face, with its pathetic expression and her low, es likely to console and strengthen us in our terrible position The quiet little discussions we had together on theological subjects settled, once and for all, reat deal

Both girls were devoted adherents of the Church of England, and could repeat most of the Church services entirely fro the blacks, but I gently told theht this inadvisable, as any rupture in our friendly relations with the natives would have been quite fatal--if not to our lives, at least to our chances of reaching civilisation Moreover, ion of their own They believed in the omnipotence of a Great Spirit in whose hands their destinies rested; and him they worshi+pped with ive to God The funda them was not _love_, but _fear_: propitiation rather than adoration

We sang the usual old hy theirls such si ”_Une nacelle en silence_,” which I had learnt at Sunday-school in Switzerland It is interesting to note that this was Bruno's favourite air Poor Bruno! he took s_, which he simply detested When I started one of these plaintive ditties Bruno would first protest by barking his loudest, and if I persisted, he would siust to some place where he could not hear the hated sounds On Sunday evening we generally held a prayer-service in the hut, and at such times offered up most fervent supplications for delivery

Often I have seen these poor girls lifting up their whole souls in prayer, quite oblivious for the s, until recalled to a sense of their awful positions by the crash of an unusually large wave on the rocks

The girls knew no raphy than I did; and when I reat cities of the continent--Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, and Melbourne--all lay in a southerly direction, you reat island I araphical training in schools