Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/270

 sound sleep which should have been the portion of so innocent a maiden, especially after such an arduous journey, did not visit her pillow. It was of ferns, that night, her couch, of palm-leaves in the hut, for here she stayed as had been arranged in the morning, Ben and Dick sleeping in the open not far away. She had wanted to spend one night, before sailing, in the place where Ben had rested during his exile, but at the last moment she was almost tempted to change her plans and sleep in her snug berth on the North Star. She would have felt just a little more secure after the uncanny incidents of the day. But she prided herself on "being game," and she had a goodly measure of pertinacity handed down by her Puritan ancestors, so she stayed on shore.

Even on this soft, sweet-smelling pallet she tossed and turned—for hours it must have been—although she had no man-made clock to tell the passage of time, only the Heavenly constellations, gradually sinking behind the palm-trees towards the west.

A strange and forbidding throng danced through the chambers of her tousled head. The scarlet and black kings, 258