“Come, Hal,” said she, “we must be going now!”
He nodded, his eyes glowering coals of desire, and followed after. Was the bird, then, going to escape his hand? A sinister look darkened his face; just such a look as had made Captain Briggs a brute when he had shouldered his way into his cabin aboard the _Silver Fleece_, to master the captive girl.
“Laura, wait a minute, please!” begged Hal.
“Well, what is it?” she asked, half-turning, a beautiful, white, gracious figure in the greenery—a very wood-nymph of a figure, sylvan, fresh, enwoven with life’s most mystic spell—the magic of youth.
“You haven’t seen half my little Mysterious Island up here!”
“Mysterious Island?” asked she, pleased by the fanciful whim. “You call it that, do you?”
“Yes, I’ve always called it that ever since I read Jules Verne, when I was only a youngster. I’ve never told anybody, though. I haven’t told that, or a hundred other imaginings.” He had come close to her again, had taken her by the arm, was drawing her away from the path and toward the little flower-enameled greensward among the boulders crowned with birch and pine. “You’re the only one that knows my secret, Laura. You’ll never, never tell, now, will you?”
“Never!” she answered, uneasiness dispelled by his frank air. “Do you imagine things like that, too, Hal? I thought I was the only one around here who ever ‘pretended.’ Are you a dreamer, too?”
“Very much a dreamer. Sit down here, Laura, and let me tell you some of my dreams.”
He sat down in the grass, and drew her down beside him. She yielded “half willing and half shy.” For a moment he looked at her with eyes of desire. Then, still holding her hand, he said:
“It was all fairies and gnomes up here when I first came. Fairyland in those boyhood days. After a while the fairies went away and pirates began to come; pirates and Indians and a wild crew. I was sometimes a victim, sometimes a member of the brotherhood. There’s treasure buried all ’round here. Those were the days when I was reading about Captain Kidd and Blackbeard. You understand?”
He laughed, as her mood yielded under the subtle mastery of his voice, his eyes.
“Oh, but it’s a motley crew we’ve been up here, the pirates and I!” said he, leaning still closer. “‘Treasure Island’ peopled the place with adventurers—Long John Silver, and Pew and the Doctor, and all the rest. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ swept them all away, all but Man Friday; and then the savages had to come. If there’s anything at all I haven’t suffered in the way of shipwreck, starvation, cannibals and being rescued just in the nick of time up here, really I don’t know what it is. And since I’ve grown up, though of course I can’t ‘pretend’ any more, I’ve always loved this place to day-dream in, and wonder in, about the thing that every man hopes will come to him some day.”