With the girl as his guide and attendant he made a careful survey of the vast cup in which they lived. He was not much of a geologist, but it was easy to decide that here was the crest of a volcano, with a double cone, one being the great cylinder that formed the harbor; this, the smaller, the narrower, possibly the deeper entrance to the subterranean fires of long ago, had been filled with water from the sea through the rift. Into the other, the greater and shallower orifice, the earth had come, birds had dropped seeds, vegetation had sprung up and the oasis resulted.
There was but one source of fresh water on the island, the great spring that bubbled from a low cone in front of the palm-covered hillock where the houses were placed. The water was fresh, slightly mineral, slightly effervescent at its exit. It ran through tortuous channels until it pierced the encircling wall of rock through a rift, finally falling over the high cliff to the gulf beneath. So near as he could determine, that spring had never failed them.
The surrounding rock walls of the oasis were unsurmountable, both outside and in, in most places, like the walls of the harbor. There were two or three exceptions, however. There was an easy and practicable path to the place where he had first seen the girl performing that strange and mysterious ceremony of greeting, as it were, to the rising sun. There had been some objection to his going there. It seemed to be the custom that she and she alone should make that trip, but he had insisted and had soon acquired the habit of going with her every morning.
Through the rift a vast expanse of sea could be seen to the south and eastward. They could peer down into the gulf and mark the white water breaking on the barriers and the stretch of tossing sea beyond.
"Have you ever seen anything there?" he asked Truda.
"And did you never think what it might mean?"
"Have you never wanted to get away from this island?"
"Love and hate, victory and defeat, failure and success--life is there!"
"When I am ready I must go to his house. Grandfather will join our hands. I shall be his woman."
"He was the best before you came. What else was there for me?"
"It is different here," said the girl, laying her hand upon her heart.