She was a cosmopolitan sort of a girl, born and raised in Australia, educated partially in England and partially in Massachusetts. Her father was an Englishman, a scientist, her mother American, of fine old Puritan stock. This mother had died in Sydney. The father and daughter having spent much of their time together, had grown to be great companions. She had long been interested in all his work, in which she had learned to be of great assistance. Thus it came about that when he determined to visit certain of the smaller Banyac Islands, for the purpose of collecting flora and fauna for preservation, she accompanied him as a matter of course. From a private steam yacht, placed at the professor’s disposal, and also from the coast settlements, the two had made daily excursions, in a ship’s yawl in which they could make a careful survey of all the shore. Engaged in their work, one warm afternoon, they had moored the yawl among a lot of weed-covered rocks. This had been accomplished by securing the painter to one of the oars and wedging this oar down between a pair of boulders. The tide was ebbing when they landed. In a short time her father had secured a medium-sized anaconda, which having recently fed, was dull and half asleep. This serpent he had given to his daughter, who carried it back to the boat and nailed it in a box provided for any such emergency. Feeling slightly fatigued and unenthusiastic she had then sat down in the yawl, raised her sun-shade and taken out a book to read. She described the soporific effect of the heat and the lapping of the water about the boat, which had begun soon to affect her senses when she had settled down to rest. Before she knew it she had gone fast asleep. She believed that finally the tide had risen and floated the oar from between the rocks. Then doubtless a breeze had sprung up and the boat had been drifted away. “Anyway I know I must have slept for hours.” she said, “but when I did wake up—oh dear! The sky was black, and I couldn’t see any island, or anything but water, and a terrible storm was coming, and the darkness was all about me, and then—well, it was simply the awfullest wind in the world that commenced to blow!” The storm which she now described had probably been a regular monsoon. It lasted for hours, she said, and the yawl was driven wildly about on the angry sea. Like many a yawl, this craft had been broad of beam and it was therefore as seaworthy as a life-belt. It had ridden like a duck throughout the night. When at last the light returned, the girl had found herself stranded in a singular place. Not a sign could she see of the ocean, but the yawl had been driven inland on what had appeared to be a great lagoon. This water-way, the edges of which were bordered thickly with a dense, jungle-like growth, had become as calm as a mill-pond.