The island

Rest, peace, the sounds of a summer noon, and the murmur of waves. The calm of a peak in the Pacific thirteen thousand miles away from the dome of St. Paul’s, and completely out...

London was now quite out of the question: Paris compelled me to be so busy with itself. I had not seen it for years, and had never gone below the surface. The tomb of Napoleon,...

Some instinct led me to Geneva. There would be safety, I thought, in its balanced poetry and prose, the mountains held in check by the tourists, the lake by the hotels.

The calm of that passage of the Indian Ocean!--the days of sunlight, a little too ardent, perhaps; the nights of moons--the calm of the spirit, I mean, profounder than the calm...

It was a woman--so much I could make out, in spite of the distance, some three hundred yards as the crow flies, though more, of course, by the dip between the two hills--a woman...

Who does not know that story, just a century old? A ship of war from England sent out to these southern seas to fetch breadfruit for transplantation. Her work easy, her crew pas...

So much I remember of my reading, and I slowly bring it back to life, with much help in concentration from one of the rafters of yellow wood with which my chamber is roofed. I a...

Our arts--well, we till the soil, as aforesaid, but in our own way. The plough and the windmill were unknown to us a few years ago. We breed a little stock, and we exchange wool...

Victoria is my nurse. There is no doubt of it: I am in her charge. She governs all my goings out, and my comings in, and is told off, I think, to see that I do not drown myself,...

I was produced on Sunday before the whole settlement; more strictly speaking, they produced themselves before me. The villagers were in the village, for the first time, at my ho...

I was roused next morning by the report of a gun, followed by a strange commotion in the village. I had barely time to dress, and join the Ancient in the sitting-room, when a ma...

Business over, our pleasures begin. They are to stay only three clear days in all, and we must make the most of them, putting as much into every precious hour as though it were...

A deep melancholy, an extreme lassitude follow our great bereavement. ’Tis as though Death had passed over us, and his lingering shadow still blighted the sunlight of the Isle....

No better opportunity could have been desired. His Excellency was very chatty that night, in mere reaction of mood, perhaps, against the prevailing gloom of the Island. We met o...

‘That is where the fighting is to begin, then,’ she said, pointing north and north-east into the infinite blue. ‘We are to go there and look for something to kill--you said so....

‘Not yet, my Victoria! No, not yet! Let all things stay as they are, and let me stay with them, here by your side. Beautiful, perfect creature! Let me speak what must be spoken:...

So now, I think, I begin to see why I have been sent here--not to give lessons, but to take them. My education has been neglected, and I am coaching for a pass in the higher lea...

I have to tell her one day of the Empire, the power, the stretch of it, the count in millions of miles, in millions of souls; the largest empires, living or dead, mostly but par...

‘Swart then, to cast it in proper form, was of the Swarts of Norfolk, and his family had been settled in that part of the country from an extremely early time. They had subseque...

It has never occurred to me till this moment, but certainly we two live here alone. There are a few other people on the Island, I believe, and I see them every day, but only as...

I was alone with the clouds, the ocean, and my note-book. I could attend to the note-book, only by forgetting the ocean and the clouds; so, after one last look at them, I retire...

Victoria has become ‘unaccountable’--we will put it in that way. There is no knowing what to be at with Victoria: the grievance is there. And I have tried so hard to find out.

It is the old scene--the hurried assembling of the people; the signals and answering signals; the manning of the surf boat; the meeting of the elders for consultation as to ways...

There was no sleep for me. This seemed the final stroke of treason against the happiness of sentient life. I had done my best to spoil humanity’s share of it, till Victoria ente...

I dropped the paper, and lay staring at the wall, with aching eyeballs, till long past dawn. What my thoughts were, need not be told. They were hardly thoughts; they were only p...

I walked away in unutterable despondency, relieved only by one purpose, one hope--to find Victoria. I had not far to go to seek her: her statuesque form was outlined against the...

I had no room-fellow that night. The Captain had gone on board, to sleep, leaving word that he would fire his signal-gun very early in the morning. I should have been ready for...