water by this time are the engineers', and engineers always do their hair up with spanners. But really"-he respectfully scrutinised his companion's tumbled mane-"it looks very nice as it is."

Miss Etherington, upon whom last night's lesson had not been wasted, smiled, for the first time since their landing; and Mr Gale was conscious deep down in his heart, which possibly was not so light as his tongue, of a tiny thrill of satisfaction and relief. Was this peace-or merely an armistice?

"I must go now," he said. "After that we will formally annex our kingdom and draw up a constitution." "You are sure it is quite safe on the yacht?" asked Miss Etherington rather anxiously, staring under hand at the lazy swell beyond the rocks.

"I will take great care of myself," said Mr Gale in soothing tones. "Don't be anxious.'

the breakfast and made their encampment tidy.

He made no comment, but summoned a council of two to discuss the situation. He pointed out their probable position upon the chart.

"We seem to be a long way from anywhere," said the girl dismally.

"We are," said the Job's Comforter beside her; "and what is more, we are a long way from any steamer route. Still, you never know. Luckily we have a spring of water and plenty of tinned food, not to mention fish and products of the soil. We might catch a turtle, with luck, and perhaps I shall find something to shoot. Now, supposing I do the hunting and fishing and general hew-wood-draw-water business, will you undertake the cooking and general housekeeping?"

Miss Etherington nodded.

"If you were drowned," explained Miss Etherington, "I should probably starve; and in any case I should have to do all the cooking and washing-up myself."

Apparently it was only an armistice.

Still, when Mr Gale returned half an hour later with a boatload of what he described as "comforts," he found that his companion had cleared away

half and keep the stores in the other. A sort of lean-to. We will regularly organise this island before we have done with it! I wonder, now, about clothes. What we have on won't last for ever. It's a pity your cabin was under water, or I might have salved a regular wardrobe for you. Number Seven, wasn't it?"

Miss Etherington nodded. "By the way," she asked, "what was yours?" "Number Three. Why?" "Oh, nothing."

"Well, as for clothes," continued the indefatigable Mr Gale, "if we haven't got them we must make them. Can you cut out?" he inquired sternly, regarding his companion with the austere air of a Dorcas Society secretary.

"Don't you think," interposed Miss Etherington drily, "that you are taking rather too much thought for the morrow-not to speak of the day after to-morrow? May I make a suggestion?"

"By all means," said Mr Gale indulgently.

"Let us go and look round for more ships," said Miss Etherington.

The organiser, a trifle dashed, rose and meekly followed practical Eve to the summit of the rock. But there were no ships. Mr Leslie Gale turned severely upon his companion.

"You see?" he said. "Twenty minutes wasted! And life is so short. Let us return and make plans."

Miss Etherington calmly followed him down again.

Still, her suggestion was not without effect. A clause was inserted in the constitution of their kingdom to the effect that Gale should climb Point Garry (as they agreed to call the headland) twice daily, at dawn and sundown, and search the horizon for passing vessels, Miss Etherington performing the same duty at other times throughout the day, during her companion's absence at

the chase.

The rest of that morning was occupied with what is usually known as "settling in,"

a process which appears to be as inevitable to castaways in the South Pacific as to semidetached suburbanites much nearer home. At midday Miss Etherington dished up her first meal, at which, pleasantly tired, they lay side by side upon the warm sand and conversed quite amicably. Both realised simultaneously that there is something very uniting in working to retrieve a joint disaster. With one impulse Mr Gale edged a little nearer to Miss Etherington, and Miss Etherington edged a little farther away from Mr Gale.

Thus Nature, who sets the dockleaf beside the nettle, adjusts the fine balance of sexdeportment.

When they had eaten, Leslie Gale hauled the dinghy into a shady patch of sand and proceeded to invert it over a blanket.

"What are you doing?" inquired Miss Etherington, wiping a plate.

"I propose to take a siesta," said Mr Gale. "I have been working like a coolie since four o'clock this morning. I made two trips before you were up, and I am done to the world. I advise you to retire to your cave of harmony and do likewise. We must keep ourselves fit, you know, and-and-be merry and bright. I only I wish," he added awkwardly, "that you could have found yourself in more congenial company."

Then he crawled hurriedly under the dinghy's protecting shade, and rolled himself up in the blanket.

Left to her own devices, Miss Etherington, in obedience to an idea which had been obtruding itself upon her all morning, entered the cave and inspected her cork - jacket, which lay neatly rolled up upon a ledge. Upon its outer surface, as already related, was neatly stencilled the legend, S. Y. Island Queen, R.Y.S.State Room No. 3.

Very slowly and reflectively Miss Etherington rolled up the jacket and put it back upon its ledge. Then, quitting the cave, she climbed up upon Point

Gale.

"Well," remarked Miss Etherington with asperity, "if lizards are going to lie across the line of my putt on every green, I don't see how you can help winning a hole occasionally."

"These things will happen on sporting courses," said Mr Gale sympathetically. "Still you could have taken advantage of the by-law which says that lizards may be lifted or swept aside (but not pressed down) without penalty. Now for Point Garry! You get a stroke here. All square and one to play."

They stood upon the seventeenth green of the Island golfcourse. Their clubs were two home-made instruments of the hockey stick variety, their equipment being completed by a couple of solid but wellgnawed indiarubber dog balls,

the yacht to afford recreation and exercise to their hostess's terriers. It was five o'clock in the afternoon. Supply, as represented by Mr Gale, the purveyor, having temporarily satisfied Demand, as represented by Miss Etherington, the housekeeper, with sufficient comestibles and combustibles for the next twenty-four hours, the pair were indulging in a little exercise before proceeding from labour to refreshment.

The golf-course was an abiding joy. It had been opened with much ceremony a fortnight ago, Miss Etherington driving off the first ball from the first tee, and Mr Gale gallantly retrieving the same from the Pacific Ocean. There were eighteen holes, ranging from five to seventy yards in length, and the course abounded in natural hazards of the most diverse description. There were

no caddies, but, as Mr Gale remarked, a caddy when you possess only one club looks ostentatious.

The golf-course is a characteristic product of British occupation of alien territory. John Bull, we all know, has a weakness for descending casually upon the unappropriated spaces of the earth, the fact that they do not strictly belong to him being, in his view, fully balanced by the fact that he causes them to prosper as they have never prospered before. If you make a desert, he argues, blossom like the rose, what does it matter whose desert it was previously? His methods of procedure seldom vary, whether he be an official manin - possession or a younger son in search of a career. Having adjusted the local constitution to his satisfaction, he sets to work to assist the slightly flustered inhabitants to make the place pay. After that he lays out a golf-course.

at once.

There being no inhabitants upon the island, and consequently no laws to adjust, our friends had been able to get to work on the golf-course Their new life had altered them surprisingly little. After three months of a semisavage existence, so far from reverting to the service of primitive Nature, they had adapted Nature to the requirements of modern society and turned the island into a

very fair imitation of a

fashionable health Had they been of

resort. another

caste-say, the mechanicalthey would have impressed their mark in another fashion none the less indelible. There would have been water-wheels, mills, and sluices. Being of the class called leisured, accustomed to extract as much enjoyment from life as possible, and on no account ever to worry about anything, they had settled down in one of Nature's most typical strongholds to the nearest approach they could compass to the careless artificial life that they were accustomed to live. And SO powerful are use and wont, that these two unruffled Britons bade fair to expel Nature from her own stronghold. Cave man and cave woman they certainly were not yet. They were members of a class which has always been carelessly indifferent to outside influences, and does not easily change its habits or mode of speech. Consequently the island had not barbarised them. They were gently denaturalising the island.

Mr Gale took the eighteenth hole in a perfect nine, Miss Etherington's ball overrunning the green and taking refuge in a lie with which only a corkscrew could have coped. The victor having offered to the vanquished the insincere condolences usual upon such occasions, the pair sat down amicably enough to enjoy the afternoon breeze.

"What is for dinner tonight?" inquired Mr Gale.

"Turtles' eggs, fried sardines, biscuits, and bananas,"

"Oh! How are the stores in general lasting out?"

"There seems to be plenty of most things. We were rather extravagant at first, but since you developed into such a mighty hunter"

"And you into such a nailing housekeeper."

"We have become almost self-supporting."

At this fulsome interchange of compliments the pair turned and smiled upon one another. "And we seem to thrive on it," said Mr Gale complacently. "I must have gone up a stone in weight, and I feel as skittish as a young unicorn. You look pretty fit, too."

He turned and surveyed his companion. She was wearing the smart blue skirt in which she had landed on the island, sadly frayed and bleached, but still bearing the imprimatur of Dover Street, together with a flannel cricket - shirt. Round her neck was knotted a coloured handkerchief. Her feet were bare. The hairpin difficulty had never been overcome, and Miss Etherington usually kept her rippling mane plaited into a convenient pigtail. That appendage having developed a habit at the end of a full swing of dealing its owner a severe buffet in the face, it was Miss Etherington's custom when playing golf to gather her locks into a heap upon the top of her head, and confine the same within a coloured headband, after the

Mr Gale, discoursing at ease upon diet and hygiene, suddenly tripped in his speech, for without warning a soft wavy cascade fell about the girl's shoulders. Through the glistening veil he could descry the droop of her lashes and the curve of her cheek. His tongue began to frame silent phrases about the tangles of Neæra's hair, and his heart beat foolishly. Of late he had become increasingly conscious of this weakness-nay, vice. Common decency seemed to forbid such sentiments towards an unprotected female. But

"Thank you," said Miss Etherington frigidly, "I am glad you think I am putting on flesh; but you need not look at me like that. This is not Smithfield Market."

Mr Gale's attack of sentimentality passed hastily.

"Do you know," he said, "that we have been in this island for three months?"

"Have we?" replied Miss Etherington. "It seems longer," she added untruthfully.

"And I don't think," pursued Mr Gale, "that we have made the most of our opportunities."

Miss Etherington scented danger, but could not forbear to inquire

"In what way ?"

'Well," replied Mr Gale, "look at the things Robinson Crusoe did. He built boat

a

"We have a boat already,"