“Come at once--nine degrees thirty minutes N., one hundred and fifty-seven degrees twenty-five minutes E. Hurry!” His wave-length went dead. To all our frantic questions it held only silence. * * * * * I can picture Arturo, there with Nereid for those four days upon their lonely, lovely little island. But of necessity it must be a fragmentary picture with much that I can only guess; and built, too, somewhat from my own impressions of the girl as afterward I saw her for myself; and as Polly saw her, and tried to talk with her. The whole translated by my own poor fancy, into a picture of what Arturo’s emotions for her must have been. She could, even at first, understand his words a trifle; a British sailor had been drawn under alive, and had lived long enough to teach her and others some of his language. She learned it with an unnatural facility. A few broken words that first night; she said them and no more. But she understood and she was learning; so eager to learn! I try now to imagine them that first night of their meeting. There was a shy, wild fear about her, mingled with a very evident desire not to be afraid of him. He could not touch her, but he sat near her; so quietly, so gently. And as I think of his gentle, boyish, romantic figure, there in the moonlight, I can realize that none but himself could have approached her. Perhaps, that first night, they conversed only in the universal language of youth. Their crossing glances, eager yet shy, their own thoughts of what the other must be, as they gazed. Perhaps they drew together with the universal language of music. Perhaps he again played his violin for her. Perhaps she sang for him. There is no one to say. He found her human as himself. A young girl, barely yet matured, fashioned with almost a normal earthly beauty, and yet with a strange something about her, making her different. It was not her slim rounded limbs, white and flushed with the tint of coral. Nor the thick tawny tresses, framing her timorous, girlish face. Nor yet her fashion of dress--her shimmering robe, with moonbeams dancing on it like green sea water ripples in moonlight. None of these, though in truth they were all strange enough. It was something greater. A wild shyness in her manner; she sat, half reclining by the palm-trunk; but it seemed that every nerve and muscle in the young body was tense, as though she would spring away if too suddenly he moved. A gentle animal, bred in the wilds, might be like that, mistrustful of the first human hand to approach it. And other strange things about her. Her gestures, graceful, yet often meaningless. And her eyes, as she sat regarding Arturo. The sea was in her eyes, the changing sea, whipped with wind, dim with mist, wan with starlight. He gazed, over long silences, into her eyes. They held level, as she gazed with equal wonderment into his.