The sun was lowering and birds of evening were beginning to brood over the painted water when The Aloha cast anchor.  In the late light the rugged sides of the island had an air of almost sinister expectancy.  There was a great silence in their windless shelter broken only by the boom and charge of the breakers and the gulls and choughs circling overhead, winging and dipping along the water and returning with discordant cries to their crannies in the black rock.  Before the yacht, blazoned on a dark, water-polished stratum of the volcanic stone, was the White Blade which Jarvo told them marked the subterranean entrance to the mysterious island.

St. George and his companions and Barnay, Jarvo and Akko were on deck.  Rollo, whose soul did not disdain to be valet to a steam yacht, was tranquilly mending a canvas cushion.

“The adon will wait until sunrise to go ashore?” asked Jarvo.

“Sunrise!” cried St. George.  “Heaven on earth, no.  We’ll go now.”

There was no need to ask the others.  Whatever might be toward, they were eager to be about, though Rollo ventured to St. George a deprecatory:  “You know, sir, one can’t be too careful, sir.”

“Will you prefer to stay aboard?” St. George put it quietly.

“Oh, no, sir,” said Rollo with a grieved face, “one should meet danger with a light heart, sir,” and went below to pack the oil-skins.

“Hear me now,” said Barnay in extreme disfavour.  “It’s I that am to lay hereabouts and wait for you, sorr?  Lord be good to me, an’ fwhat if she lays here tin year’, and you somewheres fillin’ the eyes av the aygles with your brains blowed out, neat?” he demanded misanthropically.  “Fwhat if she lays here on that gin’ral theory till she’s rotted up, sorr?”

“Ah well now, Barnay,” said St. George grimly, “you couldn’t have an easier career.”

Little Cawthorne, from leaning on the rail staring out at the island, suddenly pulled himself up and addressed St. George.

“Here we are,” he complained, “here has been me coming through the watery deep all the way from Broadway, with an octopus clinging to each arm and a dolphin on my back, and you don’t even ask how I stood the trip.  And do you realize that it’s sheer madness for the five of us to land on that island together?”

“What do you mean?” asked St. George.

The little man shook his grey curls.

“What if it’s as Barnay says?” he put it.  “What if they should bag us all—­who’ll take back the glad news to the harbour?  Lord, you can’t tell what you’re about walking into.  You don’t even know the specific gravity of the island,” he suggested earnestly.  “How do you know but your own weight will flatten you out the minute you step ashore?”

St. George laughed.  “He thinks he is reading the fiction page,” he observed indulgently.  “Still, I fancy there is good sense on the page, for once.  We don’t know anything about anything.  I suppose we really ought not to put all five eggs in one basket.  But, by Jove—­”