Act II

The Island

Two months have elapsed, and the scene is a desert island in the
Pacific, on which our adventurers have been wrecked.

The curtain rises on a sea of bamboo, which shuts out all view save
the foliage of palm trees and some gaunt rocks. Occasionally
Crichton and Treherne come momentarily into sight, hacking and
hewing the bamboo, through which they are making a clearing between
the ladies and the shore; and by and by, owing to their efforts, we
shall have an unrestricted outlook on to a sullen sea that is at
present hidden. Then we shall also be able to note a mast standing
out of the water--all that is left, saving floating wreckage, of the
ill-fated yacht the Bluebell. The beginnings of a hut will also be
seen, with Crichton driving its walls into the ground or astride its
roof of saplings, for at present he is doing more than one thing at
a time. In a red shirt, with the ends of his sailor's breeches
thrust into wading-boots, he looks a man for the moment; we suddenly
remember some one's saying--perhaps it was ourselves--that a
cataclysm would be needed to get him out of his servant's clothes,
and apparently it has been forthcoming. It is no longer beneath our
dignity to cast an inquiring eye on his appearance. His features are
not distinguished, but he has a strong jaw and green eyes, in which
a yellow light burns that we have not seen before. His dark hair,
hitherto so decorously sleek, has been ruffled this way and that by
wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and wanted
to help his chance. His muscles must be soft and flabby still, but
though they shriek aloud to him to desist, he rains lusty blows with
his axe, like one who has come upon the open for the first time in
his life, and likes it. He is as yet far from being an expert
woodsman--mark the blood on his hands at places where he has hit
them instead of the tree; but note also that he does not waste time
in bandaging them--he rubs them in the earth and goes on. His face
is still of the discreet pallor that befits a butler, and he carries
the smaller logs as if they were a salver; not in a day or a month
will he shake off the badge of servitude, but without knowing it he
has begun.

But for the hatchets at work, and an occasional something horrible
falling from a tree into the ladies' laps, they hear nothing save
the mournful surf breaking on a coral shore.

They sit or recline huddled together against a rock, and they are
farther from home, in every sense of the word, than ever before.
Thirty-six hours ago, they were given three minutes in which to
dress, without a maid, and reach the boats, and they have not made
the best of that valuable time. None of them has boots, and had they