“Dat’s your ignerance,” returned Moses calmly.  “Us niggers, you see, ought to suffer more fro’ heat dan you whites.”

“How so?”

“Why, don’t your flossiphers say dat black am better dan white for ‘tractin’ heat, an’ ain’t our skins black?  I wish we’d bin’ born white as chalk.  I say, Massa Nadgel, seems to me dat dere’s not much left ob Krakatoa.”

They had approached near enough to the island by that time to perceive that wonderful changes had indeed taken place, and Van der Kemp, who had been for some time silently absorbed in contemplation, at last turned to his daughter and said—­

“I had feared at first, Winnie, that my old home had been blown entirely away, but I see now that the Peak of Rakata still stands, so perhaps I may yet show you the cave in which I have spent so many years.”

“But why did you go to live in such a strange place, dear father?” asked the girl, laying her hand lovingly on the hermit’s arm.

Van der Kemp did not reply at once.  He gazed in his child’s face with an increase of that absent air and far-away look which Nigel, ever since he met him, had observed as one of his characteristics.  At this time an anxious thought crossed him,—­that perhaps the blows which his friend had received on his head when he was thrown on the deck of the Sunshine might have injured his brain.

“It is not easy to answer your question, dear one,” he said after a time, laying his strong hand on the girl’s head, and smoothing her luxuriant hair which hung in the untrammelled freedom of nature over her shoulders.  “I have felt sometimes, during the last few days, as if I were awaking out of a long long dream, or recovering from a severe illness in which delirium had played a prominent part.  Even now, though I see and touch you, I sometimes tremble lest I should really awake and find that it is all a dream.  I have so often—­so very often—­dreamed something like it in years gone by, but never so vividly as now!  I cannot doubt—­it is sin to doubt—­that my prayers have been at last answered.  God is good and wise.  He knows what is best and does not fail in bringing the best to pass.  Yet I have doubted Him—­again and again.”

Van der Kemp paused here and drew his hand across his brow as if to clear away sad memories of the past, while Winnie drew closer to him and looked up tenderly in his face.

“When your mother died, dear one,” he resumed, “it seemed to me as if the sun had left the heavens, and when you were snatched from me, it was as though my soul had fled and nought but animal life remained.  I lived as if in a terrible dream.  I cannot recall exactly what I did or where I went for a long long time.  I know I wandered through the archipelago looking for you, because I did not believe at first that you were dead.  It was at this time I took up my abode in the cave of Rakata, and fell in with my good faithful friend Moses—­”