“The children are well!” she exclaimed.  Mr. Pepper, who sat opposite with a great mound of bag and rug upon his knees, said, “Gratifying.”  Rachel, to whom the end of the voyage meant a complete change of perspective, was too much bewildered by the approach of the shore to realise what children were well or why it was gratifying.  Helen went on reading.

Moving very slowly, and rearing absurdly high over each wave, the little boat was now approaching a white crescent of sand.  Behind this was a deep green valley, with distinct hills on either side.  On the slope of the right-hand hill white houses with brown roofs were settled, like nesting sea-birds, and at intervals cypresses striped the hill with black bars.  Mountains whose sides were flushed with red, but whose crowns were bald, rose as a pinnacle, half-concealing another pinnacle behind it.  The hour being still early, the whole view was exquisitely light and airy; the blues and greens of sky and tree were intense but not sultry.  As they drew nearer and could distinguish details, the effect of the earth with its minute objects and colours and different forms of life was overwhelming after four weeks of the sea, and kept them silent.

“Three hundred years odd,” said Mr. Pepper meditatively at length.

As nobody said, “What?” he merely extracted a bottle and swallowed a pill.  The piece of information that died within him was to the effect that three hundred years ago five Elizabethan barques had anchored where the Euphrosyne now floated.  Half-drawn up upon the beach lay an equal number of Spanish galleons, unmanned, for the country was still a virgin land behind a veil.  Slipping across the water, the English sailors bore away bars of silver, bales of linen, timbers of cedar wood, golden crucifixes knobbed with emeralds.  When the Spaniards came down from their drinking, a fight ensued, the two parties churning up the sand, and driving each other into the surf.  The Spaniards, bloated with fine living upon the fruits of the miraculous land, fell in heaps; but the hardy Englishmen, tawny with sea-voyaging, hairy for lack of razors, with muscles like wire, fangs greedy for flesh, and fingers itching for gold, despatched the wounded, drove the dying into the sea, and soon reduced the natives to a state of superstitious wonderment.  Here a settlement was made; women were imported; children grew.  All seemed to favour the expansion of the British Empire, and had there been men like Richard Dalloway in the time of Charles the First, the map would undoubtedly be red where it is now an odious green.  But it must be supposed that the political mind of that age lacked imagination, and, merely for want of a few thousand pounds and a few thousand men, the spark died that should have been a conflagration.  From the interior came Indians with subtle poisons, naked bodies, and painted idols; from the sea came vengeful Spaniards and rapacious Portuguese; exposed