Wat immediately started off again to make one final trip, to see that nothing had been left at the southern landing-place. Finding nothing, he came back much elated so thoroughly to have carried through his purposes in the space of a summer's night, and at last to have both Kate and Scarlett safe with him on the isle of Fiara. As for Wise Jan, he was left to sleep in peace behind the bowlder by the landing-place till his scattered senses should return. CHAPTER XXXVII THE ISLE OF BLISS Under the double shelter of the great cliffs of Lianacraig and the lower but more effectual barrier of the ridge which runs across the little island of Fiara in the direction of its greatest length, Wat and his love abode for a season in great peace. Scarlett accepted the situation with the trained alacrity of a soldier of fortune. He built camp-fires of the drift-wood of the shore, allowing the smoke to dissipate itself along the walls of the cliffs upon dark nights, and using only charred and smokeless wood on the smaller cooking-fires of the day. He also took Wise Jan under his sway and rigid governance, so that, very much to his own surprise, that youth found himself continually running here and there at the word of command, as unquestioningly as if he had been a recruit of a newly formed regiment under the drastic treatment of the famous master-at-arms. At first Kate felt the strangeness of being left upon a lonely island with none of her own sex to speak to or give her countenance. But she was a girl of many experiences in a world which was then specially hard and cruel to lonely women. While yet a child she had seen houses invaded by rude soldiery. She had fled from conventicle with the clatter of hoofs and the call of trumpet telling of the deadly pursuit behind her. Even the manner of her capture and her confinement on this distant isle told a plain tale of suffering endured and experience gained. Hers had been, largely by her own choice, no sheltered life passed in the bieldy howe of common things. She had met sorrow and difficulty before, face to face, eye to eye, and was ready so to encounter them again. But to be on the island of Fiara in daily contact with her lover, to gain momentarily in knowledge of her own affection, to feel the bonds which bound her to this one man continually strengthen, were some of the new experiences of these halcyon days. Wat and Kate walked much under the shelter of that wall of rocks which stood a hundred yards back from the sandy northern shore of the island. Here they were screened from observation in every direction save towards the north, and that way the sea was clear to the Pole. Blue and lonely it spread before them, the waves coming glittering and balancing in from the regions of ice and mist, as sunnily and invitingly as though they had been the billows of the Pacific arching themselves in thunder upon a strand of coral.