CONCLUSION
Three years and a few months have passed. The date is Easter Monday
(Easter falls early this year), and from the Keg of Butter Battery the
Commandant, as he stands looking seaward, hears the school-bell ringing
in the town at the foot of Garrison Hill, though the school has been
closed a week since for the Easter holidays.
He hears it, but for a while pays no attention to it, though it keeps
ding-dinging insistently. His eyes are bent on the sea; yet not in the
direction of Saaron, where, if they sought carefully, they might detect
a trace of smoke coiling up from the fold of the hills which hides Eli
Tregarthen's farm; but westward, towards the main, whence the steamer
will arrive before nightfall. She is not due for hours, yet the
Commandant's gaze searches the horizon.
The Keg of Butter Battery mounts no guns as yet It is no longer the
ruined platform above which Vashti sat on the crumbling wall and poked
at the wild thyme with her sunshade. The Government contractor has
transformed it: the wall has disappeared, and a smooth glacis slopes
from the Commandant's feet over hidden chambers, constructed to house
those quick-firing guns. The chambers are ready: the guns will arrive
within a week. It is not for them, however, that the Commandant scans
the horizon so intently.
Although it is holiday-time, the bells in the town below are ringing to
the school-house; but the school-house is filled with flowers. Two
years ago the Lord Proprietor called his Islanders together, and
explained how he hoped to bring back prosperity to the Islands by means
of daffodil culture. For an experiment, he offered to present a
thousand Dutch bulbs to every cottager who would give them soil and
cultivation, and to-day the Islanders celebrate their first daffodil
show.
In years to come, as the trade increases, the market will keep them too
happily busy to waste time on exhibitions. We see them, and we part
with them, on the eve of prosperity. So much, at any rate, has grown of
the few bulbs carried by Archelaus for a peace-offering.
* * * * *
The Commandant takes out his watch, discovers that it is close upon
time for the opening ceremony, and descends the hill in a hurry. At the
school-house door he meets the Lord Proprietor, and they shake hands as
they enter the building together. But after going the round of the
stalls, the Lord Proprietor looks up.
"She is coming this afternoon, is she not?"
"She is coming," says the Commandant, and looks forth from the open
window over the sea.
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