“Yes; how did you guess it?”

“I read it in your eyes.”

“Then please do not read my eyes, but look where you are going.”

“Perhaps I was doing that too,” he said.

They were standing on the landward side of the shallow water in which he fought the octopus.

Already the dark fluid emitted by his assailant in its final discomfiture was passing away, owing to the slight movement of the tide.

Iris was vaguely conscious of a double meaning in his words.  She did not trouble to analyze them.  All she knew was that the man’s voice conveyed a subtle acknowledgment of her feminine divinity.  The resultant thrill of happiness startled, even dismayed her.  This incipient flirtation must be put a stop to instantly.

“Now that you have brought me here with so much difficulty, what are you going to do?” she said.  “It will be madness for you to attempt to ford that passage again.  Where there is one of those horrible things there are others, I suppose.”

Jenks smiled.  Somehow he knew that this strict adherence to business was a cloak for her real thoughts.  Already these two were able to dispense with spoken word.

But he sedulously adopted her pretext.

“That is one reason why I brought the crowbars,” he explained.  “If you will sit down for a little while I will have everything properly fixed.”

He delved with one of the bars until it lodged in a crevice of the coral.  Then a few powerful blows with the back of the axe wedged it firmly enough to bear any ordinary strain.  The rope-ends reeved through the pulley on the tree were lying where they fell from the girl’s hand at the close of the struggle.  He deftly knotted them to the rigid bar, and a few rapid turns of a piece of wreckage passed between the two lines strung them into a tautness that could not be attained by any amount of pulling.

Iris watched the operation in silence.  The sailor always looked at his best when hard at work.  The half-sullen, wholly self-contained expression left his face, which lit up with enthusiasm and concentrated intelligence.  That which he essayed he did with all his might.  Will power and physical force worked harmoniously.  She had never before seen such a man.  At such moments her admiration of him was unbounded.

He, toiling with steady persistence, felt not the inward spur which sought relief in speech, but Iris was compelled to say something.

“I suppose,” she commented with an air of much wisdom, “you are contriving an overhead railway for the safe transit of yourself and the goods?”

“Y—­yes.”

“Why are you so doubtful about it?”

“Because I personally intended to walk across.  The ropes will serve to convey the packages.”

She rose imperiously.  “I absolutely forbid you to enter the water again.  Such a suggestion on your part is quite shameful.  You are taking a grave risk for no very great gain that I can see, and if anything happens to you I shall be left all alone in this awful place.”