He paused, and gazed over the glowing tree-tops into the golden horizon, with a longing, wistful look.  At the same time something like an electric shock passed through Nigel’s frame, for was not this narrative strangely similar in its main features to that which his own father had told him on the Keeling Islands about beautiful little Kathleen Holbein and her father?  He was on the point of seizing the hermit by the hand and telling him what he knew, when the thought occurred that attacks by pirates were common enough in those seas, that other fathers might have lost daughters in this way, and that, perhaps, his suspicion might be wrong.  It would be a terrible thing, he thought, to raise hope in his poor friend’s breast unless he were pretty sure of the hope being well founded.  He would wait and hear more.  He had just come to this conclusion, and managed to subdue the feelings which had been aroused, when Van der Kemp turned to him again, and continued his narrative—­

“I know not how it was, unless the Lord gave me strength for a purpose as he gave it to Samson of old, but when I recovered from the stinging blow I had received, and saw the junk hoist her sails and heard my child scream, I felt the strength of a lion come over me; I burst the bonds that held me and leaped into the sea, intending to swim to her.  But it was otherwise ordained.  A breeze which had sprung up freshened, and the junk soon left me far behind.  As for the other junk, I never saw it again, for I never looked back or thought of it—­only, as I left it, I heard a mocking laugh from the one-eyed villain, who, I afterwards found out, owned and commanded both junks.”

Nigel had no doubt now, but the agitation of his feelings still kept him silent.

“Need I say,” continued the hermit, “that revenge burned fiercely in my breast from that day forward?  If I had met the man soon after that, I should certainly have slain him.  But God mercifully forbade it.  Since then He has opened my eyes to see the Crucified One who prayed for His enemies.  And up till now I have prayed most earnestly that Baderoon and I might not meet.  My prayer has not been answered in the way I wished, but a better answer has been granted, for the sin of revenge was overcome within me before we met.”

Van der Kemp paused again.

“Go on,” said Nigel, eagerly.  “How did you escape?”

“Escape!  Where was I—­Oh!  I remember,” said the hermit, awaking as if out of a dream “Well, I swam after the junk until it was out of sight, and then I swam on in silent despair until so completely exhausted that I felt consciousness leaving me.  Then I knew that the end must be near and I felt almost glad; but when I began to sink, the natural desire to prolong life revived, and I struggled on.  Just as my strength began a second time to fail, I struck against something.  It was a dead cocoa-nut tree.  I laid hold of it and clung to it all that night.  Next morning I was picked up by some fishermen who were going to Telok Betong by the outer passage round Sebesi Island, and were willing to land me there.  But as my business connections had been chiefly with the town of Anjer, I begged of them to land me on the island of Krakatoa.  This they did, and it has been my home ever since.  I have been there many years.”