I went back to school and for the short holiday stayed again with the Halmers. There was a great celebration because Philip had passed his finals and was now fully qualified.

"Suewellyn," he said, "I'm going to take up your invitation. I'm coming to Vulcan to see your father and the new hospital."

I was delighted, for I knew my parents would be. They had shown great pleasure when I talked of bringing home my friends.

So it was arranged and the next holidays Philip and Laura came back with me.

That was a wonderful holiday. My parents immediately liked the Halmers and of course my father and Philip had a great deal in common. Philip was enthusiastic about the hospital, which was still not completed. Materials and workmen were still coming over and the islanders were still looking on in awe and wonder. It was true that the building of the hospital had changed the face of the island. This gleaming white modern building erected next to our house had transformed the place from a South Sea island to a modern settlement.

My father had dreams in his eyes. At table he would talk long after the meal was finished. I could see that he planned to turn Vulcan into a kind of Singapore. Stamford Raffles had done it there. Why should he not do it here?

We would all listen entranced by his eloquence and none more than Philip.

"What was Singapore before Raffles persuaded the Sultan of Johore to cede the place to the East India Company? At that time there was hardly anyone there. Who would have believed it possible that it could be what it is today? It was ceded only at the beginning of the century. Raffles made Singapore ... introduced civilization to Singapore. Well, that is what I am going to do with this group of islands. Vulcan here will be the center. Here we shall start with our hospital. I am going to make it into a healthy island. We have only one industry but what a productive industry it is!" He went on to extol the attributes of the coconut. "Not a bit of waste anywhere. Everything produced simply and without a great outlay. Already I am planning to have groves on other islands. I intend to extend ... rapidly."

But his great concern was the hospital. "We shall need doctors," he said. "Do you think many would want to come out here? At the moment it will be difficult, but as we develop ... as there are more amenities ..." So he went on.

There was no doubt that both Laura and Philip Halmer were greatly interested in my family.

I was very happy that my parents should like them so much. But I was aware of a certain restlessness on the island. I suppose that living so closely with the people in the past and coming among them when I was so young had given me a certain rapport with them. I could sense that all was not well. It was in their looks perhaps, the furtive way in which they avoided meeting my eyes. Perhaps it was old Cougaba, who kept nodding and muttering to herself. Perhaps it was some of the looks I saw cast at the great white building glittering in the sun.

I had a clear warning. I was lying in bed with my mosquito net around me when I heard my door open softly. At first I expected it was Mother, who often came in for the nightly chats which she so much enjoyed; she usually watched and waited for me to tell her to come in.

For a second no one appeared. My heart started to pound suddenly. The door opened very slowly.

"Who's there?" I called.

There was no answer. Then I saw her. She had stepped into the room. She was dressed in a girdle made of shells strung together like beads on a string. The shells were green, red and blue; they made a faint jingling sound as she moved. Around her neck were rows of similar shells strung together; they hung down between the valley of her breasts; she was naked from the waist up as was the custom on the island. It was Cougabel.

I struggled up. "What do you want, Cougabel, at this time of night?"

She came to the bed and looked at me accusingly. "You not like Cougabel any more."

"Don't be silly," I said. "Of course I do."

She shook her head. "You have her ... school friend, and you have him. Yes, I know. You love them ... not me. I poor half white. They all white."

"What nonsense," I said. "I like them, it's true, but I haven't changed towards you. We were always friends."

"You lie. That not good."

"You should be in bed, Cougabel," I said with a yawn.

She shook her head. "Daddajo must send them away, Giant says. Daddajo not give you this man."

"What are you talking about?" I cried. But I knew. Cougabel —and that meant her mother and all the island—believed that Philip had come here to be married to me.

"Bad, bad," she went on. "Giant say so. He tell me. I child of Giant. I go to the mountain and he say, 'Send white man away. If he don't go, I angry Giant.'"

She was jealous, of course. I understood. I was to blame. I had ignored her now that Laura and Philip were here. I should not have done that. I had hurt her and this was her way of telling me so.

"Listen to me, Cougabel," I said. "These are our guests. That is why I have to entertain them. That is why I cannot be with you so much as I used to be. I'm sorry, but it is just the same between us as it ever was. I am your friend and you are mine. We have exchanged our blood, haven't we? That means we're friends forever."

"It means the one is cursed who breaks it."

"Nobody's going to break it. Do you believe me, Cougabel?"

Tears started to fall down her cheeks. She just looked at me without attempting to wipe them away. I sprang out of bed and put my arms about her.

"Cougabel ... little Cougabel ... you mustn't cry. We're going to be together. I'm going to tell you all about the big city over the sea. We're friends ... forever."

That seemed to comfort her and after a while she went away.

The next day I told Laura and Philip about her visitation in the night and how when we were little we had played together.

"You must make her join us sometimes," said Philip. "Can she ride?"

I said she could and I loved Laura and Philip for being so kind to her. We went round the beaches in one of the canoes. Cougabel and I paddled and there was a great deal of laughter.

"She is really a very beautiful girl," said Philip. "Being so much lighter in color makes her stand out against the others."

Cougabel sometimes reverted to the smocks she used to wear. They suited her, but she was really magnificent in her shells and feathers. I often noticed her eyes were on Philip; and she always contrived to be near him. If there was anything to be served, she would serve him first. Philip was rather amused by her attentions.

Then the trouble started. Cougabel told me: "Giant grumbling. He very angry. Wandalo ask him what is wrong. Giant does not like hospital."

My father had been informed of this by Wandalo, though not so precisely. The Giant had been heard to grumble some days before. When one of the women went to the mountain to lay shells there for the Giant, she had heard him rumble angrily. Something was wrong. He did not like something on the island. The Giant had been quiet for a long time, in fact all the time the hospital had been in the process of building and work on the plantation had been progressing satisfactorily. Why, then, should he start to grumble now?

My father was irritated at first. "After all this time," he cried, "are they going to try to put obstacles in my way?"

"Surely they realize the benefits of the hospital and the growing plantation," said Philip.

"They do, but they are hidebound by superstitions. They allow that old volcano to dominate them. I've tried to explain that there are hundreds of them all over the world and that there is nothing special about an extinct volcano which now and then does a little grumbling, as they call it, while it is settling down. There has been no major eruption for three hundred years. I wish I could drive this home to them."

Philip had already heard from me about the Dance of the Masks and how Cougaba had declared Cougabel to be a child of the Giant. He was enormously intrigued by stories of the island and he used to sit with Cougabel and make her talk to him. She was delighted and I felt it had completely set that matter to rights.

"Of course," said my father, "it's that old devil Wandalo who is really making the trouble. He has always resented me. It doesn't matter that we have saved many lives with modern treatment of these virulent fevers which are pests in a climate like this one. I have usurped the place of the old witch doctor and he is longing for a chance to pull down the hospital."

"That's something you will never let him do, I know," said Philip.

"I'll see him dead first," replied my father.

But old Wandalo sat under the banyan tree scrawling on the sand with his old stick, and there were more reports of the Giant's grumbling.

At the next new moon, we heard, there was to be a Dance of the Masks.

Philip and Laura were delighted. That this should have happened during their visit seemed a stroke of good luck to them.

I was more conscious now than I had been before of that mood of frenzy which came over the island. I realized that though my father had introduced so much that was good and which for a time they seemed to appreciate, they could in one night revert to the old savagery. He had never been able to eradicate the fear of the Grumbling Giant and he realized as did my mother that we had been believing he might have done this but it was only because the Giant had been quiet.

Cougabel was in a ferment of excitement. This time she would join the dancers. She prepared herself in secret and my mother said we should have to take special care with a nubile girl in the house. This had not been the case before because at the last dance Cougabel had been very young.