ves still rose angrily under the grey sky, but were fast abating.
He saw in a moment that the shore was full of wreckage: there were spars
and timbers everywhere, and all the litter of a ship. Some of the
timbers were flung so high upon the rocks that he saw how great the
violence of the storm had been. He walked along, and in a minute he came
upon the body of a man lying on his face, strangely battered.

Then he saw another body, and yet another. He lifted them up, but there
was no sign of life in them; and he recognised with a great sadness that
they were the pirates who had dragged him from his home. He had for a
moment one evil thought in his mind, a kind of triumph in his heart that
God had saved him from his enemies, and delivered them over to death;
but he knew that it was a wicked thought, and thrust it from him; at
last at the end of the rocks he found the old captain himself. There was
a kind of majesty about him, even in death, as he lay looking up at the
sky, with one arm flung across his breast, and the other arm
outstretched beside him. Then he saw the ribs of the ship itself stick
up among the rocks, and he wondered to find the hull so broken and
ruinous.

His next care was that the poor bodies should have burial. So about
midday he took his boat from its shelter, and rowed across to the land;
and then, with a strange fear of the heart, he climbed the cliff, and
walked down slowly to the village, which he had thought in his heart he
would never have seen again.

The wind had now driven the clouds out of the sky, and the sun came out
with a strong white light, the light that shines from the sky when the
earth has been washed clean by rain. It sparkled brightly in the little
drops that hung like jewels in the grass and bushes. It was with a great
throb of the heart that David came out upon the end of the down, and saw
the village beneath him. It looked as though no change had passed over
it, but as though its life must have stood still, since he left it; then
there came tears into David's eyes at the thought of the old hard life
he had lived there, and how God had since filled his cup so full of
peace; so with many thoughts in his heart he came slowly down the path
to the town. He first met two children whom he did not know; he spoke to
them, but they looked for a moment in terror at his face; his hair and
beard were long, and he was all tanned by the sun; but he spoke softly
to them, and presently they c