fine, this was a shipwreck with all the modern improvements. Perhaps it was this fact which rendered the relations of the castaways different from those usually observed under such circumstances. The crew did not go off in the boats, abandoning the vessel and the passengers, nor did they broach the rum-casks. They worked as hard and were as obliging and respectful as before, and brought queer fishes and shells for the ladies to see when they found them. When the captain and mate walked along the reef at night to what was still called the “cabin dinner,” they still ate in silence, and when the meal was over, the mate felt it his duty at once to go and see what the men were doing, and when he did not come back, the captain invariably went to see what was keeping him, and did not come back either. As for the men, they appeared in great force on Sunday evening, when hymns were to be sung, and again one week-day, when a concert was got up after work was over, the sailors in their clean clothes, with very shiny faces and very smooth hair, and the Lascars in gorgeous raiment of all the colours of the rainbow, but otherwise the passengers saw less of them than they had done on shipboard. The archipelago to which the desert island belonged was not all uninhabited. There were two good-sized islands in it which supported a considerable population, and the castaways made two expeditions to the larger of these. The people were all bigoted Moslems, who testified extreme horror at the sight of the unveiled faces of Lady Haigh and Cecil, and regarded the whole party with feelings of lively disapprobation. Their own women were wrapped up from top to toe whenever they ventured out of doors, and their faces were additionally protected by a thick horse-hair mask, so that it is possible that it was the discomfort of this arrangement which made the men fear a domestic rebellion as the result of the visit of the Frangi ladies. For the rest, the islanders lived a good deal on fish, and apparently also threw away a good deal, and dried a considerable quantity for future consumption, which made their streets unpleasantly odoriferous, and there were few attractions in their surroundings to counterbalance this defect, until, in extending the area of their observations, Cecil and Charlie made a great discovery. Lying among the hills which backed the little town was a valley filled with prehistoric ruins, and beyond this again an ancient cemetery. To Cecil this find was as a trumpet-call to utilise her detention in a way which would command the gratitude of the learned world by demonstrating, possibly finally, the real origin of the Phœnicians, and Charlie required little persuasion to induce him to help her. Accordingly, they returned to the island the next day, prepared for business. Photography was not practised then as it is now, but Cecil intended to sketch the ruins, and Charlie was to hire natives to begin excavations under his direction.