Page:Guy Boothby - The Beautiful White Devil.djvu/72

 on the foreyard foot-rope, and a little later a tiny sand-piper came aboard, and hopped about the fo'c's'le as calmly as if he had been doing nothing else all his life.

When first I came on deck, with the exception of the cook in his galley, not a soul was to be seen. But presently, while I was watching the antics of the bird I have just described, my old acquaintance Walworth joined me at the rail, and laid himself out for conversation.

"Doctor," he said, "I want you to tell me candidly, if, in all your experience of the world, you have ever looked upon a fairer scene than that you have before you now?"

"No; I don't think I have," I answered. "It is marvellously beautiful, but all the same, I must own one or two things about it rather puzzle me."

"And what are they?"

"Well! in the first place, since I can see no opening in the hills, how did we get in here?"

"Ah! you have been thinking about that, have you? Well, to save you any further trouble on that score, let me tell yon that if you were to look for a hundred years from where you stand now you would not be able to discover it. And, unless her ladyship gives permission, it would be as much as my life is worth for me to tell you. Now for your second question?"

"Well, I can see, say, a dozen huts, all told, over yonder," I answered. "Surely they don't constitute the settlement of which you spoke to me?"

"No; they do not. Those you see over there are only the outlying portions of the village, meant to