Joan, meanwhile, Joan, elusive creature of the wilds, became I know not
exactly what. She did plenty of work in the Camp, yet seemed to have no
very precise duties. She was everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes she
slept in her tent, sometimes under the stars with a blanket. She knew
every inch of the island and kept turning up in places where she was
least expected--for ever wandering about, reading her books in sheltered
corners, making little fires on sunless days to "worship by to the
gods," as she put it, ever finding new pools to dive and bathe in, and
swimming day and night in the warm and waveless lagoon like a fish in a
huge tank. She went bare-legged and bare-footed, with her hair down and
her skirts caught up to the knees, and if ever a human being turned into
a jolly savage within the compass of a single week, Joan Maloney was
certainly that human being. She ran wild.
So completely, too, was she possessed by the strong spirit of the place
that the little human fear she had yielded to so strangely on our
arrival seemed to have been utterly dispossessed.
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