“O Oscar! this can be no penal settlement; it is a paradise, a perfect paradise of beauty!” was Io’s delighted exclamation as, aided by her husband, she stepped on shore. Imagination had pictured the Andamans as some hot waste of sand, or some burning rock, fit abode for criminals driven forth from their fellow-men; but perhaps the whole earth holds no fairer spot, none more favoured by nature, than these beautiful Eastern islands—“emeralds set in the ring of the sea.” There plants grow in the richest luxuriance; there verdure clothes the forest, and flowers spangle the earth. Where the green waves gently lap the shore, corals of marvellous beauty may be seen through the transparent depths. Well worthy of artist’s pencil or poet’s lay are the dreaded Andaman Isles. Oscar, rapt in admiration, gazed on the scene around him.
“Strange—most wonderful!” burst from his lips. “Adam was for one sin banished from paradise, and my sin, far more detestable than his, has brought me into another Eden.”
“Not your sin, beloved one, say not your sin!” exclaimed Io; “rather your repentance, the brave sacrifice which you made in indeed plucking out the right eye.”
“And what gave me courage to make the sacrifice?” asked Oscar, looking gratefully at his wife. “Was it not my Io’s brave words when, at the crisis of my life, she said, ‘Do what you think is right’?”
The Andaman Islands are governed in a humane and liberal spirit. There is no dungeon there—no chains, unless it be in Viper’s Island, to which only the most desperate ruffians are transported to be kept under stricter ward. The chief commissioner has indeed the power of life or death, and soldiers to carry his orders into effect; but when the Coldstreams arrived they found themselves under the sway of a wise and beneficent ruler. The commissioner received Oscar with grave politeness, his wife with chivalrous courtesy.
“I am afraid, Mr. Coldstream,” said the commissioner, “that I must make no exception in your favour. Our people here have small allotments of land, and are expected to cultivate them with their own hands.”
“I wish for no exception in my favour, sir,” was the convict’s reply; “I deserve none, for there is no one in these islands who has sinned so grievously against the laws of God and man as myself.”
To Oscar Coldstream his manual labour became a pleasure. No land was better cultivated than his; and he made his hut a bower of beauty, in which the bird of paradise was Io.
But the principal labour of both the Coldstreams was amongst the convicts of either sex. The English couple were earnest missionaries without the name. Year by year souls were won for the Master, and out of the chaos of misery and crime a little church of lowly believers gradually rose. Oscar had no children. This was to him not a matter of regret, for he could not have endured to leave to his offspring a heritage of disgrace, the name of the sons of a felon. But the Coldstreams were granted many spiritual children, and the ties formed in the Andaman Islands were to Oscar and Io so close and so dear, that even had a pardon come they would have declined leaving their place of exile, or rather their sphere of work. Oscar was known amongst the people as the pir, or saint—a title which he always repudiated, but which clung to him still.
Letters connected the Coldstreams with the outer world, and not unfrequently the chief commissioner lent newspapers to read. Oscar knew when a fair young queen ascended the throne which this worthy descendant of Alfred still fills. He received from Mark Lawrence the glad news that after years of loneliness his home was to be brightened by the presence of a wife. The chaplain’s former disappointment had been in itself a blessing, for without it he would have been linked to one who would not have made him happy.
With one scene in the life of the Coldstreams, about eight years after their arrival in the Andaman Islands, my little story concludes.
“There is a vessel in the offing, my Oscar,” said Io one morning; “shall we go down and see the arrivals?”
Oscar was just putting the last touches to a beautiful water-colour picture which was to be a birthday present to Io; but he rose at once, put down his brush, and prepared to accompany his wife.
“Formerly,” observed Oscar, “it was with sadness that we saw new-comers arriving; now hope counterbalances pity. We look upon prisoners coming to the Andaman Islands less as sinners to be punished than as souls that may be saved.”
“But these are not prisoners; they come in the commissioner’s yacht. There are nice white English faces,” exclaimed Io joyfully, quickenin............