I made out a string of faded letters. I began excitedly to spell
them out.

"I--s--l--oh, _Island Queen_! You see she did belong here.
Probably she brought the original porcine Adam and Eve to the
island."

"Luckily forgot the snake, though!" remarked the Honorable Bertie
with unlooked-for vivacity. For so far Aunt Jane's trembling
anticipations had been unfulfilled by the sight of a single snake,
a fact laid by me to the credit of St. Patrick and by Cookie to
that of the pigs.

"Snakes 'd jes' be oysters on de half shell to dem pigs," declared
Cookie.

As we rowed away from the melancholy little derelict I saw that
near by a narrow gully gave access to the top of the cliff, and I
resolved that I would avail myself of this path to visit the
_Island Queen_ again. My mind continued to dwell upon the unknown
figure of the copra gatherer. Perhaps the loss of his sloop had
condemned him to weary months or years of solitude upon the island,
before the rare glimmer of a sail or the trail of a steamer's smoke
upon the horizon gladdened his longing eyes. Hadn't he grown very
tired of pork, and didn't his soul to this day revolt at a ham
sandwich? What would he say if he ever discovered that he might
have brought away a harvest of gold instead of copra from the
island? Last but not least, did not his heart and conscience, if
he by chance possessed them, ache horribly at the thought of the
forsaken Crusoe?