Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/257

 "It is an old friend, I see," he said with a languid smile, as she came up.

"Yes, yes; an old pet. I had lost him for a long time. But you 're not killed? Oh! I'm so glad."

"Killed!" repeated Sam, who was down on his knees carefully examining the patient; "I should think not. He 's not even bruised—only stunned a little. Where did you fall from, Robin—the tree-top?"

"No; from the edge of the precipice."

"What! from the ledge sixty or seventy feet up there? Impossible! You would certainly have been killed if you had fallen from that."

"So I certainly should," returned Robin, "if God had not in His mercy grown trees and shrubs there, expressly, among other purposes, to save me."

In this reply Robin's mind was running on previous conversations which he had had with his friend on predestination.

The idea of shrubs and trees having been expressly grown on an island of the Southern Seas to save an English boy, seemed doubtful to Sam. He did not, however, express his doubts at the time, but reserved the subject for a future "theological discussion."

Meanwhile, Slagg, Stumps, and Johnson, having spread some palm branches on a couple of stout poles, laid our hero thereon, and bore him in safety