day was breaking as lavelle awoke to a realization that he still lived. he found himself in a silence so awful in its intensity and mystery that it made him catch his breath sharply like one does at a sudden immersion in cold water. the peace of eternity seemed to have breathed a spell upon the pitiless deep. it slept.
his long sleep had refreshed him and his mind instantly leaped back to the events of the night before. a glance round him discovered chang, a hundred feet away, searching the horizon. rowgowskii lay stretched on the opposite side of the fire.
just as emily had imagined him lost so lavelle for a moment believed her gone. his senses went crashing, but they reordered themselves instantly at the touch of a warm body at his side.
putting his left hand out to raise himself it fell on emily not half an arm's length away. there exhausted nature had bent her head in slumber at midnight when the wind hushed. there chang had covered her again with the boat sail. she lay with her right arm under her vivid head and her face toward the new day. one long golden braid curled across the hilltop's wet grass where it had been flung unconsciously in her sleep. the other hung across her exquisite bosom, rising and falling gently with her breathing, and its end trailing the ground. such an expression as lavelle had so often seen in the faces of play-weary children was in hers.
"wonder woman," he murmured. "wonder woman."
slipping out from under the sail, not daring to breathe, lavelle gently drew the canvas back over the sleeper's shoulders and stole toward the chinaman. a slight giddiness assailed him for a moment and with it there came a reminder of the old pain which he had felt upon awakening first in the boat.
"master, master," called the giant worshipfully, springing toward him.
chang's first glance was directed at lavelle's forehead and what he saw there pleased him.
"him all lite, master; all lite," he said. "him stop bleed."
but it was of the night that lavelle would hear, and the chinaman rapidly unfolded the wondrous tale of how their lives had been saved by emily. the wrecked boat was gone. emily, lavelle, rowgowskii, and chang alone remained of those who had escaped in their party from the cambodia. the two coolie sailors had been gathering wood at the foot of the hill when the upheaval came. they were gone. at the end he whispered: "you lose him plistol out you plocket. nobody know—only chang, master."
the ocean bore no trace of the half of the island which had been torn away. in the heavy wind and sea which chang reported of the first part of the night it was lavelle's opinion that the derelict mass, bound together only by a mattress of interlaced roots and vegetation, must have resolved its parts with the waters.
owing to chang's having placed the water, provisions, and the boat's equipment high on the hill when the craft had been emptied in the evening, the sea had been able to steal but little. the treacherous bit of earth which remained offered, too, an important contribution to the food supply in a wealth of taro plants, the tuberous substitute of the potato in the islands of the pacific. it is of this that the hawaiians make their poi.
by the bearing of the rising sun lavelle noted that the island had swung round completely during the night. the side of the camel's back-like hill, which had been toward the south the preceding evening, was turned to the northward. the crest of this hill was at least two hundred feet above sea level. as the island lay now its northern side sloped easily for perhaps fifty yards and then broke off abruptly in a sharp cleavage fifty feet sheer to the sea.
the hill's base was slightly less than the island's half-mile width. a gentle slope marked what had become the eastern shore; a straight palisade rise of two hundred feet, the western side. a gradual slope on the hill's southern side blended at the foot with an undulating meadow, green with grass and taro, and about three-quarters of a mile in length. a lone palm tree rose in the center of this patch.
the top of the hill presented a flat surface of a city half-block square. at no distant time a thatched hut had stood there. it was of the remains of this that chang and rowgowskii had built the fire.
while he sipped a cup of water which chang brought to him, lavelle took stock of all these things. not one thought of solace could he draw from the bitter, hopeless scheme which unfolded itself to his gaze. by the time the non-arrival of the cambodia was read into disaster and a searching ship sent into these seas the end would have long since come to this island. well he realized the emptiness of this stretch of ocean and the one chance in ten thousand which might bring a stray merchantman or trader stumbling upon them. well he realized the slight tenure of the crust of earth which held him. judging from its assumed position it had drifted a phenomenal distance for that latitude. he believed it must have been ripped away from one of the islands of the hawaiian group. that it had survived so long seemed to him miraculous and but emphasized the imminence of its early dissolution. what had already happened since the landing confirmed in his mind that the next storm would be the mother of the island's oblivion and all it held.
floating islands are uncommon in any but the most placid waters. yet in the phenomena of the sea's scheme of things they are common occurrences. the charts of all big waters are dotted with their records. shipmasters come to port reporting an island where one was never before and where it would seem against all reason that one should be. still man imbued with the unconquerable mystery of the sea writes this report on his charts for all times. first he writes it as a fact, justifying its assumption as such. according to its reported size, ships go searching for it—men-o'-war, leisurely merchantmen, vagrant traders. no island is found. only sea is there. but man does not trust the deep; he never will. he does not erase his record. he marks it "p.d."—position doubtful. years pass without further report of an island in this locality. then he goes as far as he dares. he writes on his charts "e.d."—meaning "existence doubtful."
how many a well-found ship, sailing in a sea charted clear and deep, has blundered into islands like the one which held the cambodia castaways and suddenly come unto her last port? no man may tell. seldom, however, do ocean traffickers meet with these waif lands north or south of the twentieth parallels.
with never a dream that this could be one—here in the thirties—though the absence of reefs and the raw and broken aspect of the island shore had given him pause, lavelle had trapped himself. he had captained her, for whose salvation he would gladly lay down his life, into a prison to which death held the key.
it was with this bitter, self-blaming thought, and tortured by it, that he turned away from the sea to behold the gold woman coming toward him with a wistful smile. he ran to meet her and his soul cried out at the denial of its impulse to fold her to his heart and soothe her hurts.
