"Isbel," he said, speaking loud enough for her to hear, yet not loud enough to attract the possible attention of Schumer in the tent near by, "what is the matter with you? Come, I am not going to hurt you. Don't you know me?"
He held out his hand, with the finger-tips pressed together, as one holds out one's hand to an animal; then he took a step toward her.
She turned and whisked away round the tree, and he heard her movements among the bushes as she vanished from sight.
He came out of the grove and went back to the tent.
Next morning when he came out of the tent the first thing that struck his eye was Isbel. She had returned, and was setting the sticks for the fire as though nothing had occurred. But when her business was done she vanished again, reappearing only in time to help in the preparation of the evening meal.
It would be impossible to bring home to your mind, unless you had experienced it, the vast change which the presence of the _Southern Cross_ made in the picture of the lagoon. Not on the retinal picture, but on the mental.
Her presence altered everything. The place became a harbor. Those spars fretting the sky, that hull making green water beneath its copper brought civilization up hand over fist from a thousand leagues down under.
Loneliness had vanished, the crying of the gulls lost its melancholy, and the sound of the surf on the reef, when one noticed it, no longer spoke of desolation.
And, just as the schooner altered the lagoon, so did the presence of her crew and the labor men alter the life on the island.
In a moment life had become all hurry and work.
Isbel reappeared regularly to help in the preparation of their food; she would be on hand when wanted for any light job, but she never sat by them now when they talked; she avoided saying a word unless absolutely obliged to, and when she spoke she no longer looked Floyd in the eyes.
"She is frightened to death of us and she loathes us," he thought. "Me just as much as him. I don't wonder, either."
Schumer said nothing on the matter; perhaps he was too busy to notice the change in the girl. He certainly had his work cut out for him. On the first day he had to deal with the labor men, showing them their job. They knew nothing of pearls or the shell business, but they were like otters in the water, and they picked up the small technicalities of the labor at once.