Jenks, unshaven and ragged, squatted tailor wise near her. Close at hand, on two sides, the shaggy walls of rock rose in solemn grandeur. The neighboring trees, decked now in the sable livery of night, were dimly outlined against the deep misty blue of sea and sky or wholly merged in the shadow of the cliffs.
They lost themselves in the peaceful influences of the hour. Shipwrecked, remote from human land, environed by dangers known or only conjectured, two solitary beings on a tiny island, thrown haphazard from the depths of the China Sea, this young couple, after passing unscathed through perils unknown even to the writers of melodrama, lifted up their voices in the sheer exuberance of good spirits and abounding vitality.
The girl was specially attracted by "The Buffalo Battery," a rollicking lyric known to all Anglo-India from Peshawur to Tuticorin. The air is the familiar one of the "Hen Convention," and the opening verse runs in this wise:
I love to hear the sepoy with his bold and martial tread, And the thud of the galloping cavalry re-echoes through my head. But sweeter far than any sound by mortal ever made Is the tramp of the Buffalo Battery a-going to parade. _Chorus_: For it's "Hainya! hainya! hainya! hainya!" Twist their tails and go. With a "Hâthi! hâthi! hâthi!" ele-_phant_ and buffa_lo_, "Chow-chow, chow-chow, chow-chow, chow-chow," "Tèri ma!" "Chel-lo!" Oh, that's the way they shout all day, and drive the buffalo.
Iris would not be satisfied until she understood the meaning of the Hindustani phrases, mastered the nasal pronunciation of "hainya," and placed the artificial accent on _phant_ and _lo_ in the second line of the chorus.
Jenks was concluding the last verse when there came, hurtling through the air, the weird cries of the singing beetle, returning, perchance, from successful foray on Palm-tree Rock. This second advent of the insect put an end to the concert. Within a quarter of an hour they were asleep.
Thenceforth, for ten days, they labored unceasingly, starting work at daybreak and stopping only when the light failed, finding the long hours of sunshine all too short for the manifold tasks demanded of them, yet thankful that the night brought rest. The sailor made out a programme to which he rigidly adhered. In the first place, he completed the house, which had two compartments, an inner room in which Iris slept, and an outer, which served as a shelter for their meals and provided a bedroom for the man.