every time he approached and lifted his hat to her.  Muriel was an English rector’s daughter, from a country village in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year’s visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta.  She was travelling under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old chaperon, being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her own berth, closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found her chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with that nice Mr. Thurstan.  And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in the western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder green darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the bulwarks in confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or recede, and talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor with the handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were, beside her.  For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka, in Fiji, and was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six years’ service in that new-made colony.

“How delightful it would be to live on an island like that!” Muriel murmured, half to herself, as she gazed out wistfully in the direction of the disappearing coral reef.  “With those beautiful palms waving always over one’s head, and that delicious evening air blowing cool through their branches!  It looks such a Paradise!”

Felix smiled and glanced down at her, as he steadied himself with one hand against the bulwark, while the ship rolled over into the trough of the sea heavily.  “Well, I don’t know about that, Miss Ellis,” he answered with a doubtful air, eying her close as he spoke with eyes of evident admiration.  “One might be happy anywhere, of course—­in suitable society; but if you’d lived as long among cocoanuts in Fiji as I have, I dare say the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be a little less real to you.  Remember, though they look so beautiful and dreamy against the sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy one, that time; I’m really afraid we must go down to the cabin soon; she’ll be shipping seas before long if we stop on deck much later—­and yet, it’s so delightful stopping up here till the dusk comes on, isn’t it?)—­well, remember, I was saying, though they look so beautiful and dreamy and poetical—­’Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea,’ and all that sort of thing—­these islands are inhabited by the fiercest and most bloodthirsty cannibals known to travellers.”

“Cannibals!” Muriel repeated, looking up at him in surprise.  “You don’t mean to say that islands like these, standing right in the very track of European steamers, are still heathen and cannibal?”