Nigel has taken to general superintendence of the flourishing community in the midst of which he has cast his lot.  He may be almost regarded as the prime minister of the islands, in addition to which he has started an extensive boat-building business and a considerable trade in cocoa-nuts, etc., with the numerous islands of the Java Sea; also a saw-mill, and a forge, and a Sunday-school—­in which last the pretty, humble-minded Winnie lends most efficient aid.  Indeed it is said that she is the chief manager as well as the life and soul of that business, though Nigel gets all the credit.

Captain Roy sometimes sails his son’s vessels, and sometimes looks after the secular education of the Sunday-school children—­the said education being conducted on the principle of unlimited story-telling with illimitable play of fancy.  But his occupations are irregular—­undertaken by fits and starts, and never to be counted on.  His evenings he usually devotes to poetry and pipes—­for the captain is obstinate, and sticks—­like most of us—­to his failings as well as his fancies.

There is a certain eccentric individual with an enthusiastic temperament and blue binoculars who pays frequent and prolonged visits to the Keeling Islands.  It need scarcely be said that his name is Verkimier.  There is no accounting for the tastes of human beings.  Notwithstanding all his escapes and experiences, that indomitable man of science still ranges, like a mad philosopher, far and wide over the archipelago in pursuit of “booterflies ant ozer specimens of zee insect vorld.”  It is observed, however, even by the most obtuse among his friends, that whereas in former times the professor’s nights were centrifugal they have now become centripetal—­the Keeling Islands being the great centre towards which he flies.  Verkimier is, and probably will always be, a subject of wonder and of profound speculation to the youthful inhabitants of the islands.  They don’t understand him and he does not understand them.  If they were insects he would take deep and intelligent interest in them.  As they are merely human beings, he regards them with that peculiar kind of interest with which men regard the unknown and unknowable.  He is by no means indifferent to them.  He is too kindly for that.  He studies them deeply, though hopelessly, and when he enters the Sunday-school with his binoculars—­which he often does, to listen—­a degree of awe settles down on the little ones which it is impossible to evoke by the most solemn appeals to their spiritual natures.

Nigel and Winnie have a gardener, and that gardener is black—­as black as the Ace of Spades or the King of Ashantee.  He dwells in a corner of the Rakata Cottage, but is addicted to spending much of his spare time in the Krakatoa one.  He is as strong and powerful as ever, but limps slightly on his right leg—­his “game” leg, as he styles it.  He is, of course, an immense favourite with the young people—­not less