HOW WE PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Originally the island had been but a barren, uneven rock, the resting-place
for gulls; but now its summit has been made flat by a coating of concrete.
There is just enough earth between the concrete and the rocky edges of the
island to support a circle of cocoanut-trees, a great almond-tree, and a queer-
looking banyan-tree, whose wide-spreading arms extend over nearly half the
little plaza. Below the light-house, and set back like caves into the side of the
island, are the kitchen and the servants’ quarters, a covered passageway con-

 

RAFFLES’S LIGHT-HOUSE, ON THE ISLAND IN THE INDIAN OCEAN,

necting them with the rotunda of the tower, in which we have set our dining-
table.

‘Ah Ming, our “ China boy,” seems to be inveterate in his determination to
spoil our Swiss Family Robinson illusion. We are hardly settled before he
comes to us.

“ Mem” (mistress), “no have got ice-e-blox. Ice-e all glow away.”

“ Very well, Ming. Dig a hole in the ground, and put the ice in it.”

“ How can dig? Glound all same, hard like ice-e.”

“Well, let the ice melt,” I reply. “ Robinson Crusoe had no ice.”

In a half-hour Jim, the cook, comes up to speak to the “Mem.” He lowers
his cue, brushes the creases out of his spotless shirt, draws his face down, and
commences: