She laughed. A difficult situation had passed without undue effort.
Unhappily the man reopened it. Whilst using a crowbar as a wedge he
endeavored to put matters on a straightforward footing.

"A little while ago," he said, "you seemed to imply that I had assumed
the name of Jenks."

But Miss Deane's confidential mood had gone. "Nothing of the kind," she
said, coldly. "I think Jenks is an excellent name."

She regretted the words even as they fell from her lips. The sailor
gave a mighty wrench with the bar, splitting the log to its clustering
leaves.

"You are right," he said. "It is distinctive, brief, dogmatic. I cling
to it passionately."

Soon afterwards, leaving Iris to the manufacture of sago, he went to
the leeward side of the island, a search for turtles being his
ostensible object. When the trees hid him he quickened his pace and
turned to the left, in order to explore the cavity marked on the tin
with a skull and cross-bones. To his surprise he hit upon the remnants
of a roadway--that is, a line through the wood where there were no
well-grown trees, where the ground bore traces of humanity in the shape
of a wrinkled and mildewed pair of Chinese boots, a wooden sandal, even
the decayed remains of a palki, or litter.

At last he reached the edge of the pit, and the sight that met his eyes
held him spellbound.