BY LEE FOSTER HARTMAN
From Harper's Monthly Magazine
To dine on the veranda of the Marine Hotel is the one delightful surprise which Port
Charlotte affords the adventurer who has broken from the customary paths of travel in the
South Seas. On an eminence above the town, solitary and aloof like a monastery, and
deep in its garden of lemon-trees, it commands a wide prospect of sea and sky. By day,
the Pacific is a vast stretch of blue, flat like a floor, with a blur of distant islands on the
horizon--chief among them Muloa, with its single volcanic cone tapering off into the sky.
At night, this smithy of Vulcan becomes a glow of red, throbbing faintly against the
darkness, a capricious and sullen beacon immeasurably removed from the path of men.
Viewed from the veranda of the Marine Hotel, its vast flare on the horizon seems hardly
more than an insignificant spark, like the glowing cigar-end of some guest strolling in the
garden after dinner.
It may very likely have been my lighted cigar that guided Eleanor Stanleigh to where I
was sitting in the shadows. Her uncle, Major Stanleigh, had left me a few minutes before,
and I was glad of the respite from the queer business he had involved me in. The two of
us had returned that afternoon from Muloa, where I had taken him in my schooner, the
Sylph, to seek out Leavitt and make some inquiries--very important inquiries, it seemed,
in Miss Stanleigh's behalf.
Three days in Muloa, under the shadow of the grim and flame-throated mountain, while I
was forced to listen to Major Stanleigh's persistent questionnaire and Leavitt's erratic and
garrulous responses--all this, as I was to discover later, at the instigation of the Major's
niece--had made me frankly curious about the girl.
I had seen her only once, and then at a distance across the veranda, one night when I had
been dining there with a friend; but that single vision of her remained vivid and
unforgettable--a tall girl of a slender shapeliness, crowned by a mass of reddish-gold hair
that smoldered above the clear olive pallor of her skin. With that flawless and brilliant
colouring she was marked for observation--had doubtless been schooled to a perfect
indifference to it, for the slow, almost indolent, grace of her movements was that of a
woman coldly unmindful of the gazes lingering upon her. She could not have been more
than twenty-six or -seven, but I got an unmistakable impression of weariness or balked
purpose emanating from her in spite of her youth and glorious physique. I looked up to
see her crossing the veranda to join her uncle and aunt--correct, well-to-do English
people that one placed instantly--and my stare was only one of many that followed her as
she took her seat and threw aside the light scarf that swathed her bare and gleaming
shoulders.
