The first dish Bridget ever literally cooked for Mark, with her own hands, or indeed for any one else, was a mess of ‘grass,’ as it was the custom of even the most polished people of America then to call asparagus.  They had gone together to the asparagus bed on Loam Island, and had found the plant absolutely luxuriating in its favourite soil.  The want of butter was the greatest defect in this mess, for, to say the truth, Bridget refused the ship’s butter on this occasion, but luckily, enough oil remained to furnish a tolerable substitute.  Mark declared he had never tasted anything in his life half so good!

At the end of the week, the governor, as Heaton had styled Mark, and as Bridget had begun playfully to term him, gave the opinion that it was necessary for them to tear themselves away from their paradise.  Never before, most certainly, had the Reef appeared to the young husband a spot as delightful as he now found it, and it did seem to him very possible for one to pass a whole life on it without murmuring.  His wife again and again assured him she had never before been half as happy, and that, much as she loved Anne and the baby, she could remain a month longer, without being in the least wearied.  But it was prudent to return to the Peak, for Mark had never felt his former security against foreign invasion, since he was acquainted with the proximity of peopled islands.

The passage was prosperous, and it gave the scene an air of civilization and life, to fall in with the Neshamony off the cove.  She was coming in from Rancocus, on her last trip for the stores, having brought everything away but two of the goats.  These had been driven up into the mountains, and there left.  Bigelow had come away, and the whole party of colonists were now assembled at Vulcan’s Peak.  But Betts had a communication to make that gave the governor a good deal of concern.  He reported that after they had got the pinnace loaded, and were only waiting for the proper time of day to quit Rancocus, they discovered a fleet of canoes and catamarans, approaching the island from the direction of the Group, as they familiarly termed the cluster of islands that was known to be nearest to them, to the northward and westward.  By means of a glass, Betts had ascertained that a certain Waally was on board the leading canoe, and he regarded this as an evil omen.  Waally was Ooroony’s most formidable rival and most bitter foe; and the circumstance that he was leading such a flotilla, of itself, Bob thought, was an indication that he had prevailed over honest Betto, in some recent encounter, and was now abroad, bent on further mischief.  Indeed, it seemed scarcely possible that men like the natives should hear of the existence of such a mountain as that of Rancocus Island, in their vicinity, and not wish to explore, if not to possess it.