"There's something I want to speak to you about, sir," said Phillips.
"If you must speak," said Donovan, "I hope you'll sort of murmur. That engine has stopped clanking for a moment and Smith isn't shouting any at those poor devils of islanders. 'Silence,' says the poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 'like a poultice came to heal the wound of sound.' It's a kind of advanced sample of what this island's going to be."
This was not encouraging to Mr. Phillips. He hesitated. Far away, under the shadow of the cliffs, a small boat moved slowly. In it was the Queen, seated in the stern with a huge box of chocolates in her lap. Kalliope rowed, her mouth full of chocolates. Phillips could not see the box or Kalliope's mouth. The boat was too far away for that. But he knew the chocolates were there. Early in the day the Queen had come to him and demanded candies. She had come at a fortunate moment. He was in the act of opening a large case, sent out, so the label declared, by Fuller, and Kalliope had carried down to the boat a huge box of chocolates. It was the sight of that boat--perhaps, too, the thought of the chocolates--which spurred Mr. Phillips to tell his tale in spite of all discouragement. Is there anything which is more eloquent of innocent helplessness, anything which makes a stronger appeal to the protective instinct of a man, than the vision of two girls eating chocolates?
"The day I first landed, sir," he said, "I found this."
He handed the torn envelope to Mr. Donovan.
"The postmark, sir," he said, "is London, December 15, 1913. Now how do you think it got here?"
Donovan looked at the envelope curiously. He turned it over, felt the texture of it with his fingers. At last he spoke.
"Mr. Phillips," he said, "I may be wrong in my interpretation of facts. I don't know that any recognized minister of religion would support me; but it's my belief that if Eve hadn't stirred that serpent up, kind of annoyed him by poking round, the creature would have lain quiet enough and there'd have been no trouble about the apple. That's the nature of snakes. I've seen quite a few and I know. Now this island is about the nearest thing to a real restful paradise that I've bumped into since I first started my pilgrimage through this vale of tears. I don't say there's no snakes in it. There may be. But my notion is to let those snakes lie unless they start in molesting me."