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Now and then a hilarious laugh bursts from a group of children, or a hymn rises from some grateful heart, for as yet there is no secular music in Ratinga! In the lagoon lies a man-of-war, its sails neatly furled, and its trim rigging, dark hull, and taper spars, perfectly reproduced in the clear water.
And now, once again, we find ourselves in the palm-grove of Ratinga Island. It is a fine autumn afternoon. The air is still as regards motion, but thrilling with the melody of merry human voices as the natives labour in the fields, and alive with the twittering of birds as they make love, quarrel, and make it up again in the bushes.
The desire to possess the little box of clothes and trifles with which he had landed on Ratinga had been the cause, he thought, of the savages attacking him; so he resolved to divest himself totally of this world's goods and go to his brethren with nothing but the Word of God in his hand. He did so.
One day, to the inexpressible surprise and joy of the islanders, a large vessel was seen to pass through the narrow opening in the coral reef, and cast anchor in the lagoon. The excitement on Ratinga was great, for vessels rarely had occasion to visit the island, although some of them, probably South Sea whalers, were seen to pass it on the horizon two or three times a year.
For some days after leaving Ratinga a stiff breeze enabled the schooner which had been re-named by its crew the "Free Rover" to proceed southward rapidly. Then a profound calm succeeded, and for a couple of days the vessel lay almost motionless on the sea. During all this time the poor maniac in her hold lay upon his blood-stained couch, for no one dared at least no one cared to approach him.
We can only add that Waroonga and Betsy returned home, that a stalwart son of Tomeo went in after years, to Sugar-loaf Island, and carried off Lippy as his bride, along with her mother; that a handsome son of Ongoloo took revenge by carrying Zariffa away from Ratinga, without her mother; that regular and frequent intercourse was set up between the two islands by means of a little schooner; that Ebony stuck to his master and mistress through thick and thin to a good old age; that Orlando went to England, studied medicine, and returned again to Ratinga with a fair daughter of that favoured land; that Wapoota's morals improved by degrees; that Buttchee became more reconciled to European dress as he grew older; and that the inhabitants of the two islands generally became wiser and happier though of course not perfect through the benign influence of that Gospel which teaches man to do to others as he would have others do to him.
"And shipwrecked I am, body, soul, and spirit," he muttered, bitterly, as he sat in his cabin, brooding over the past and future. Leaving him there, and thus, we will return to Ratinga, the peaceful inhabitants of which were destined at this time to be tickled with several little shocks of more or less agreeable surprise.
He was also used to a pretty rough life, besides being young and strong. He therefore soon recovered from the treatment he had received, and, not many weeks afterwards, determined to make another attempt to land on the island of Ratinga as our coral-gem on the ocean's breast was named.
And here he beheld the cause of another of the little surprises with which we have said the people of Ratinga were visited at that time. It was a stately man-of-war, with the Union Jack flying from her peak, and her sails backed so as to check her way. A boat was being lowered from her side, and Orlando with his party hastened to the beach to meet it.
The slopes and knolls and palm-fringed cliffs of Ratinga were tipped with gold by the western sun one evening as he declined towards his bed in the Pacific, when Marie Zeppa wandered with Betsy Waroonga and her brown little daughter Zariffa towards the strip of bright sand in front of the village.
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