To any one ignorant of the actors in this scene, the indecision of the savage would have appeared unaccountable; for there could be no doubt of his desire to slay the fair youth—­still less doubt of his ability to dart his formidable spear with precision.  Nevertheless, there was good reason for his hesitating; for young Henry Stuart was well known, alike by settlers and savages, as possessing the swiftest foot, the strongest arm, and the boldest heart in the island, and Keona was not celebrated for the possession of these qualities in any degree above the average of his fellows, although he did undoubtedly exceed them in revenge, hatred, and the like.  On one occasion young Stuart had, while defending his mother’s house against an attack of the savages, felled Keona with a well-directed blow of his fist.  It was doubtless out of revenge for this that the latter now dogged the former through the lonely recesses of the mountain-pass by which he had crossed the island from the little settlement in which was his home, and gained the sequestered bay in which he expected to find the schooner.  Up to this point, however, the savage had not summoned courage to make the attack, although, with the exception of a hunting-knife, his enemy was altogether unarmed; for he knew that in the event of missing his mark the young man’s speed of foot would enable him to outstrip him, while his strength of frame would quickly terminate a single combat.

As the youth gained the more open land near the beach, the possibility of making a successful cast of the spear became more and doubtful.  Finally the savage shrunk into the bushes, and abandoned the pursuit.

“Not here yet, Master Gascoyne,” muttered Henry, as he sat down on a rock to rest; for, although the six miles of country he had crossed was a trifle, as regarded distance, to a lad of nineteen, the rugged mountain-path by which he had come would have tried the muscles of a Red Indian, and the nerve of a goat.  “You were wont to keep to time better in days gone by.  Truly it seems to me a strange thing that I should thus be made a sort of walking post between my mother’s house and this bay, all for the benefit of a man who seems to me no better than he should be, and whom I don’t like, and yet whom I do like in some unaccountable fashion that I don’t understand.”

Whatever the youth’s thoughts were after giving vent to the foregoing soliloquy, he kept them to himself.  They did not at first appear to be of an agreeable nature; for he frowned once or twice, and struck his thigh with his clenched hand; but gradually a pleasant expression lit up his manly face, as he gazed out upon the sleeping sea and watched the gorgeous clouds that soon began to rise and cluster round the sun.

After an hour or so spent in wandering on the beach picking up shells, and gazing wistfully out to sea, Henry Stuart appeared to grow tired of waiting; for he laid himself down on the shore, turned his back on the ocean, pillowed his head on a tuft of grass, and deliberately went to sleep.