For Boupari was one of those rare remote islets where the very rumor of our European civilization has hardly yet penetrated.

As for Muriel, though she was alarmed enough, of course, and intensely shaken by the sudden shock she had received, the whole surroundings were too wholly unlike any world she had ever yet known to enable her to take in at once the utter horror of the situation.  She only knew they were alone, wet, bruised, and terribly battered; and the Australasian had gone on, leaving them there to their fate on an unknown island.  That, for the moment, was more than enough for her of accumulated misfortune.  She come to herself but slowly, and as her torn clothes dried by degrees before the fire and the heat of the tropical night, she was so far from fully realizing the dangers of their position that her first and principal fear for the moment was lest she might take cold from her wet things drying upon her.  She ate a little of the plantain that Felix picked for her; and at times, toward morning, she dozed off into an uneasy sleep, from pure fatigue and excess of weariness.  As she slept, Felix, bending over her, with the biggest blade of his knife open in case of attack, watched with profound emotion the rise and fall of her bosom, and hesitated with himself, if the worst should come to the worst, as to what he ought to do with her.

It would be impossible to let a pure young English girl like that fall helplessly into the hands of such bloodthirsty wretches as he knew the islanders were almost certain to be.  Who could tell what nameless indignities, what incredible tortures they might wantonly inflict upon her innocent soul?  Was it right of him to have let her come ashore at all?  Ought he not rather to have allowed the more merciful sea to take her life easily, without the chance or possibility of such additional horrors?

And now—­as she slept—­so calm and pure and maidenly—­what was his duty that minute, just there to her?  He felt the blade of his knife with his finger cautiously, and almost doubted.  If only she could tell what things might be in store for her, would she not, herself, prefer death, an honorable death, at the friendly hands of a tenderhearted fellow-countryman, to the unspeakable insults of these man-eating Polynesians?  If only he had the courage to release her by one blow, as she lay there, from the coming ill!  But he hadn’t; he hadn’t.  Even on board the Australasian he had been vaguely aware that he was getting very fond of that pretty little Miss Ellis.  And now that he sat there, after that desperate struggle for life with the pounding waves, mounting guard over her through the livelong night, his own heart told him plainly, in tones he could not disobey, he loved her too well to dare what he thought best in the end for her.