Publisher's Synopsis
Two months have elapsed, and the scene is a desert island in the Pacific, on which ouradventurers have been wrecked.The curtain rises on a sea of bamboo, which shuts out all view save the foliage of palmtrees and some gaunt rocks. Occasionally Crichton and Treherne come momentarily intosight, hacking and hewing the bamboo, through which they are making a clearing betweenthe ladies and the shore; and by and by, owing to their efforts, we shall have anunrestricted outlook on to a sullen sea that is at present hidden. Then we shall also be ableto note a mast standing out of the water-all that is left, saving floating wreckage, of the illfated yacht the Bluebell. The beginnings of a hut will also be seen, with Crichton driving itswalls into the ground or astride its roof of saplings, for at present he is doing more than onething at a time. In a red shirt, with the ends of his sailor's breeches thrust into wadingboots, he looks a man for the moment; we suddenly remember some one's saying-perhaps it was ourselves-that a cataclysm would be needed to get him out of his servant'sclothes, and apparently it has been forthcoming. It is no longer beneath our dignity to castan inquiring eye on his appearance. His features are not distinguished, but he has a strongjaw and green eyes, in which a yellow light burns that we have not seen before. His darkhair, hitherto so decorously sleek, has been ruffled this way and that by wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and wanted to help his chance. His muscles must besoft and flabby still, but though they shriek aloud to him to desist, he rains lusty blows withhis axe, like one who has come upon the open for the first time in his life, and likes it. He isas yet far from being an expert woodsman-mark the blood on his hands at places wherehe has hit them instead of the tree; but note also that he does not waste time in bandagingthem-he rubs them in the earth and goes on. His face is still of the discreet pallor thatbefits a butler, and he carries the smaller logs as if they were a salver; not in a day or amonth will he shake off the badge of servitude, but without knowing it he has begun