"Florenshe," he said,
thickly, "letsh sit down together somewhere. Letsh talk, my dear."
The girl slipped from the proffered hands and fled from the room.
"Whatsh matter with the girl?" said Sir William.
Out at sea, all by itself, somewhere about thirty miles from a
certain good-sized island in a certain ocean, there lies another
little island--an eyot--about a mile long and half a mile broad. It
is a coral islet. The coral reef stretches out all round it, except
in one or two places, where the rock shelves suddenly, making it
possible for a ship to anchor there. The islet is flat, but all
round it runs a kind of natural sea-wall, about ten feet high and
as many broad; behind it, on the side which the wall protects from
the prevailing wind, is a little grove of low, stunted trees, the
name and kind of which the successive tenants of the island have
never been curious to ascertain. I am therefore unable to tell you
what they are. The area protected by the sea-wall, as low as the
sea-level, was covered all over with long, rank grass. At the
north end of the islet a curious round rock, exactly like a martello
tower, but rather higher, rose out of the water, separated from
the sea-wall by twenty or thirty feet of deep water, dark blue,
transparent; sometimes rolling and rushing and tearing at the sides
of the rock, sometimes gently lifting the seaweed that clung to
the sides.
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