we prefer.  Or, following the law that Bernard Shaw discovered, the ladies have selected, each of them, the mates that they prefer.  They are now turning themselves inside out to prove to us that we selected them.  Voila!  The rest is obvious.  If they come to terms, all right!  If they don’t — " He paused.  “I repeat that we are placed in, a situation new in the history of the world.  I repeat the bromidion — circumstances alter cases.  We may have to stay on this island as long as we live.  I am perfectly willing to confess that just now I’d rather not be rescued.  But it’s over our months that we’ve been here.  We must think of the future.  The future justifies anything.  If these girls don’t come to terms, they must be made to come to terms.  You’ll find I’m right.”

“Right!” exclaimed Billy hotly.  “What are you talking about?  Those are the principles of an Apache or a Hottentot.”

“Or a cave-man,” Pete added.

“Well, what are we under our skins but Hottentots and Apaches and cave-men?” said Ralph.  “Now, I leave it to you.  Look facts in the face.  Use your common sense.  Count out civilization and all its artificial rules.  Think of our situation on this island, if we don’t capture these women soon.  We can’t tell when they’ll stop coming.  We don’t know what the conditions of their life may be.  The caprice may strike them to-morrow to cut us out for good.  Maybe their men will discover it — and prevent them from coming.  A lot of things may happen to keep them away.  What’s to become of us in that case?  We’ll go mad, five men alone here.  It isn’t as though we could tame them by any gentle methods.  You can’t catch eagles by putting salt on their tails.  In the first place, we can’t get close enough to them, because of their accursed wings, to prove that we wouldn’t harm them.  They’ve sent us a challenge — it’s a magnificent one.  They’ve thrown down the gage.  And how have we responded?  I bet they think we’re a precious lot of molly-coddles!  I bet they’re laughing in their sleeves all the time.  I’d hate to hear what they say about us.  But the point I’m trying to make is not that.  It’s this:  we can’t afford to lose them.  This place is a prison now.  It will be worse than that if this keeps up — it’ll be a madhouse.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you’re advocating marriage by capture?” Billy asked in an incredulous voice.

“I mean to tell you I’m arguing capture,” Ralph said with emphasis.  “After that, you, can trust the marriage question to take care of itself.”

Argument broke out hydra-headed.  They wrangled the whole evening.  Theory at first guided them.  In the beginning, names like Plato, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer preceded quotation; then, came Shaw, Havelock-Ellis, Kraft-Ebing, Weininger.  Sleep deadened their discussion temporarily but it burst out at intervals all the next day.  In fact, it seemed to possess eternal vitality, eternal fascination.  Leaving theory, they went for parallels of their strange situation, to history, to the Scriptures, to fiction, to drama, to poetry.