The weather favoured us that night, so that by sunset the tents were up,
the boats unloaded, a store of wood collected and chopped into lengths,
and the candle-lanterns hung round ready for lighting on the trees.
Sangree, too, had picked deep mattresses of balsam boughs for the
women's beds, and had cleared little paths of brushwood from their tents
to the central fireplace. All was prepared for bad weather. It was a
cosy supper and a well-cooked one that we sat down to and ate under the
stars, and, according to the clergyman, the only meal fit to eat we had
seen since we left London a week before.
The deep stillness, after that roar of steamers, trains, and tourists,
held something that thrilled, for as we lay round the fire there was no
sound but the faint sighing of the pines and the soft lapping of the
waves along the shore and against the sides of the boat in the lagoon.
The ghostly outline of her white sails was just visible through the
trees, idly rocking to and fro in her calm anchorage, her sheets
flapping gently against the mast.
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