The Blue Lagoon: A Romance

It was on the 10th of May, so quickly did things move under the supervision of the bedridden captain, that the _Raratonga_, with Lestrange on board, cleared the Golden Gates, an...

To forget the passage of time you must live in the open air, in a warm climate, with as few clothes as possible upon you. You must collect and cook your own food. Then, after a...

He had a suite of rooms at the Palace Hotel, and he lived the life of any other rich man who is not addicted to pleasure. He knew some of the best people in the city, and conduc...

He had shipped his oars just for a minute’s rest. He must have slept for hours, for now, behold! a warm, gentle wind was blowing, the moon was shining, and the fog was gone.

Dick put the hook away and took to the sculls. He had a three-mile row before him, and the tide was coming in, which did not make it any the easier. As he rowed, he talked and g...

He had slept an hour and more when he was brought to his senses by a thin and prolonged shriek. It was Emmeline in a nightmare, or more properly a day-mare, brought on by a meal...

On either side lay a great sweep of waving blue water. Calm, almost as a lake, sapphire here, and here with the tints of the aqua marine. Water so clear that fathoms away below...

The Pacific slept; a vast, vague swell flowing from far away down south under the night, lifted the _Northumberland_ on its undulations to the rattling sound of the reef points...

Next morning the light of day filtering through the trees awakened Emmeline in the tent which they had improvised whilst the house was building. Dawn came later here than on the...

Five rainy seasons had passed and gone since the tragic occurrence on the reef. Five long years the breakers had thundered, and the sea-gulls had cried round the figure whose sp...

They were seated on the baulks of timber that cumbered the deck of the brig on either side of the caboose. An ideal perch. The sun was setting over Australia way, in a sea that...

Before the woman had time to speak a thunderous step was heard on the companion stairs, and Le Farge broke into the saloon. The man’s face was injected with blood, his eyes were...

Emmeline, seated on the coral rock, had almost forgotten Dick for a moment. The sun was setting, and the warm amber light of the sunset shone on reef and rock-pool. Just at suns...

“I mean,” said Emmeline, “they go to sleep and never wake up again. Ours did. It had stripes on it, and a white chest, and rings all down its tail. It went asleep in the garden,...

Months passed away. Only one bird remained in the branches of the artu: Koko’s children and mate had vanished, but he remained. The breadfruit leaves had turned from green to pa...

“I wonder where Paddy is?” cried Dick next morning. He was coming out of the chapparel pulling a dead branch after him. “He’s left his coat on the sand, and the tinder box in it...

Mr Button saw no more rats, much to Dick’s disappointment. He was off the drink. At dawn next day he got up, refreshed by a second sleep, and wandered down to the edge of the la...

The sun became fainter still, and vanished. Though the air round the dinghy seemed quite clear, the on-coming boats were hazy and dim, and that part of the horizon that had been...

One morning, about a week after the day on which the old sailor, to use his own expression, had bent a skirt on Emmeline, Dick came through the woods and across the sands runnin...

“Mr Button,” said she, when the latter had descended, “there’s a little barrel”; she pointed to something green and lichen-covered that lay between the trunks of two trees—somet...

Two birds were sitting in the branches of the artu tree: Koko had taken a mate. They had built a nest out of fibres pulled from the wrappings of the cocoa-nut fronds, bits of st...

The next day Dick was sitting under the shade of the artu. He had the box of fishhooks beside him, and he was bending a line on to one of them. There had originally been a coupl...

They carried the bananas up to the house, and hung them from a branch of the artu. Then Dick, on his knees, lit the fire to prepare the evening meal. When it was over he went do...

Mr Button was seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left ear. He was playing the “Shan van vaught,” and accompanying the tune, punctuating it, with blows of his left hee...

At noon, in the shallows of the reef, under the burning sun, the water would be quite warm. They would carry the baby down here, and Emmeline would wash it with a bit of flannel...

“Childer!” shouted Paddy. He was at the cross-trees in the full dawn, whilst the children standing beneath on deck were craning their faces up to him. “There’s an island forenin...

When they awoke next morning the day was dark. A solid roof of cloud, lead-coloured and without a ripple on it, lay over the sky, almost to the horizon. There was not a breath o...

They had dinner at noon. Paddy knew how to cook fish, island fashion, wrapping them in leaves, and baking them in a hole in the ground in which a fire had previously been lit. T...

It was the fourth day of the long calm. An awning had been rigged up on the poop for the passengers, and under it sat Lestrange, trying to read, and the children trying to play....

The romance of coral has still to be written. There still exists a widespread opinion that the coral reef and the coral island are the work of an “insect.” This fabulous insect,...

“I don’t know,” said Dick, who had not thought of this; “there he is, anyhow. I’ll tell you what, Em, we’ll row across and wake him. I’ll boo into his ear and make him jump.”

“Not a speck,” answered Le Farge. “Damn that Irishman! but for him I’d have got the boats away properly victualled and all; as it is I don’t know what we’ve got aboard. You, Jen...

Every hour or so Mr Button would shake his lethargy off, and rise and look round for “sea-gulls,” but the prospect was sail-less as the prehistoric sea, wingless, voiceless. Whe...

At first they thought they were ruined; then Dick, searching, found the old saw under a tree, and the butcher’s knife near it, as though the knife and saw had been trying to esc...

A child wanders into the street, or is left by its nurse for a moment, and vanishes. At first the thing is not realised. There is a pang and hurry at the heart which half vanish...

One day Dick climbed on to the tree above the house, and, driving Madame Koko off the nest upon which she was sitting, peeped in. There were several pale green eggs in it. He di...

He dropped the line, and turned with a start. There was no one visible. He ran amongst the trees calling out her name, but only echoes answered. Then he came back to the lagoon...

The idea of spiritual life must be innate in the heart of man, for all that terrible night, when the children lay huddled together in the little hut in the chapparel, the fear t...

They knew him upon the Pacific slope as “Mad Lestrange.” He was not mad, but he was a man with a fixed idea. He was pursued by a vision: the vision of two children and an old sa...

Ever since the tragedy of six years ago there had been forming in the mind of Emmeline Lestrange a something—shall I call it a deep mistrust. She had never been clever; lessons...

It was a great business cutting the canes and dragging them out in the open. Emmeline helped; whilst Hannah, seated on the grass, played with the bird that had vanished during t...

The woods here had been less affected by the cyclone than those upon the other side of the island, but there had been destruction enough. To reach the place he wanted, Dick had...

He began to collect the things, and carry them to the dinghy. He took the stay-sail and everything that might be useful; and when he had stowed them in the boat, he took the bre...

On the edge of the green sward, between a diamond-chequered artu trunk and the massive bole of a breadfruit, a house had come into being. It was not much larger than a big hen-h...

Dick was darting about naked on the sand, Mr Button after him with a pair of small trousers in his hand. A crab might just as well have attempted to chase an antelope.

He could not move for a moment, then he sprang to his feet and ran towards her. She looked pale and dazed, and she held something in her arms; something wrapped up in her scarf....

There was nothing in the boat that could possibly be used as a paddle; the scull was only five or six yards away, but to attempt to swim to it was certain death, yet they were b...

The moon rose up that evening and shot her silver arrows at the house under the artu tree. The house was empty. Then the moon came across the sea and across the reef.

The island had sunk slowly from sight; at sundown it was just a trace, a stain on the south-western horizon. It was before the new moon, and the little boat lay drifting. It dri...

I. WHERE THE SLUSH LAMP BURNS II. UNDER THE STARS III. THE SHADOW AND THE FIRE IV. AND LIKE A DREAM DISSOLVED V. VOICES HEARD IN THE MIST VI. DAWN ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA VII. STORY...

X. AN ISLAND HONEYMOON XI. THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE XII. THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE (CONTINUED) XIII. THE NEWCOMER XIV. HANNAH XV. THE LAGOON OF FIRE XVI. THE CYCLONE XVII. THE...

I. UNDER THE ARTU TREE II. HALF CHILD-HALF SAVAGE III. THE DEMON OF THE REEF IV. WHAT BEAUTY CONCEALED V. THE SOUND OF A DRUM VI. SAILS UPON THE SEA VII. THE SCHOONER VIII. LOVE...

XVI. THE POETRY OF LEARNING XVII. THE DEVIL’S CASK XVIII. THE RAT HUNT XIX. STARLIGHT ON THE FOAM XX. THE DREAMER ON THE REEF XXI. THE GARLAND OF FLOWERS XXII. ALONE XXIII. THEY...