The boats of the _Rufus Smith_ had departed from the island, and our relations with humanity were severed. The thought of our isolation awed and fascinated me as I sat meditatively upon a keg of nails watching the miracle of the tropic dawn. The men were hard at work with bales and boxes, except Mr. Tubbs, who gave advice. It must have been valuable advice, for he assured everybody that a word from his lips had invariably been enough to make Wall Street sit up and take notice. But it is a far cry from Wall Street to Leeward Island. Mr. Tubbs, ignored, sought refuge with me at last, and pointed out the beauties of Aroarer as she rose from the embrace of Neptune. "Aroarer Borealis, to be accurate," he explained, "but they didn't use parties' surnames much in classic times." The glad cry of breakfast put an end to Mr. Tubbs's exposition of mythology. So does dull reality clog the feet of dreams that it proved impossible to begin the day by digging up the treasure. Camp had to be arranged, for folk must eat and sleep even with the wealth of the Indies to be had for the turning of a sod. The cabin was reroofed and set apart as the bower of Aunt Jane and Miss Browne. I declined to make a third in this sanctuary. You could tell by looking at her that Violet was the sort of person who would inevitably sleep out loud. "Hang me up in a tree or anywhere," I insisted, and it ended by my having a tarpaulin shelter rigged up in a group of cocoa-palms. Among our earliest discoveries on the island was one regrettable from the point of view of romance, though rich in practical advantages; the woods were the abode of numerous wild pigs. This is not to write a new chapter on the geographical distribution of the pig, for they were of the humdrum domestic variety, and had doubtless appertained to the copra gatherer's establishment. But you should have seen how clean, how seemly, how self-respecting were our Leeward Island pigs to realize how profoundly the pig of Christian lands is a debased and slandered animal. These quadrupeds would have strengthened Jean Jacques's belief in the primitive virtue of man before civilization debauched him. And I shall always paraphrase the familiar line to read: "When wild in woods the noble porker ran." Aunt Jane had been dreadfully alarmed by the pigs, and wanted to keep me immured in the cabin o' nights so that I should not be eaten. But nothing less than a Bengal tiger would have driven me to such extremity. "Though if a pig should eat me," I suggested, "you might mark him to avoid becoming a cannibal at second hand. I should hate to think of you, Aunt Jane, as the family tomb!" "Virginia, you are most unfeeling," said Aunt Jane, getting pink about the eyelids. "Ah, I didn't know you Americans went in much for family tombs?" remarked the beautiful youth interestedly. "No, we do our best to keep out of them," I assured him, and he walked off meditatively revolving this.