So Oro thanked him, not too cordially for evidently he still had feeling in his toes, and once more Bastin escaped. Becoming aware of his error, he began to apologise profusely in English, while the lady Yva studied him carefully. “Is that the costume of the priests of your religion, O Bastin?” she asked, surveying his dishevelled form. “If so, you were better without it.” Then Bastin retired to straighten his tie, and grabbing his coat from Bickley, who handed it to him with a malicious smile, forced his perspiring arms into it in a peculiarly awkward and elephantine fashion. Meanwhile Bickley and I produced two camp chairs which we had made ready, and on these the wondrous pair seated themselves side by side. “We have come to learn,” said Oro. “Teach!” “Not so, Father,” interrupted Yva, who, I noted, was clothed in yet a third costume, though whence these came I could not imagine. “First I would ask a question. Whence are you, Strangers, and how came you here?” “We are from the country called England and a great storm shipwrecked us here; that, I think, which raised the mouth of the cave above the level of this rock,” I answered. “The time appointed having come when it should be raised,” said Oro as though to himself. “Where is England?” asked Yva. Now among the books we had with us was a pocket atlas, quite a good one of its sort. By way of answer I opened it at the map of the world and showed her England. Also I showed, to within a thousand miles or so, that spot on the earth’s surface where we spoke together. The sight of this atlas excited the pair greatly. They had not the slightest difficulty in understanding everything about it and the shape of the world with its division into hemispheres seemed to be quite familiar to them. What appeared chiefly to interest them, and especially Oro, were the relative areas and positions of land and sea. “Of this, Strangers,” he said, pointing to the map, “I shall have much to say to you when I have studied the pictures of your book and compared them with others of my own.” “So he has got maps,” said Bickley in English, “as well as star charts. I wonder where he keeps them.” “With his clothes, I expect,” suggested Bastin. Meanwhile Oro had hidden the atlas in his ample robe and motioned to his daughter to proceed. “Why do you come here from England so far away?” the Lady Yva asked, a question to which each of us had an answer. “To see new countries,” I said. “Because the cyclone brought us,” said Bickley. “To convert the heathen to my own Christian religion,” said Bastin, which was not strictly true. It was on this last reply that she fixed. “What does your religion teach?” she asked. “It teaches that those who accept it and obey its commands will live again after death for ever in a better world where is neither sorrow nor sin,” he answered. When he heard this saying I saw Oro start as though struck by a new thought and look at Bastin with a curious intentness.