The Garden of God

Book excerpt: The Garden of God is a sequel to novel The Blue Lagoon and it picks up precisely where it left off, with Arthur Lestrange in the ship Raratonga discovering his son Dicky and niece Emmeline with their own child, lying in their fishing boat which has drifted out to sea. It turns out that Dicky and Emmeline died and the child is drowsy but alive and is picked up by the sailors. Arthur has a dream-vision of the pair; they ask him to come to Palm Tree, the island where they lived, and promise he will see them again. Arthur takes the child, which gets the nickname Dick M, and takes his ship to Palm Tree, where he plans to stay with Dick M and Kearney, a volunteer from the crew who grows fond of Dick. The rest of the crew leave with a promise to return the next year, but they get swallowed up in a storm out at sea, and the trio stays stuck on the island