ship could have missed us?
A ship could have passed us a dozen times while you slept!"

"Bourrique!"

"Vache!"

They spat the insults of the prison while Perroquet knotted his great
fist over the other, who crouched away catlike, his mobile mouth twisted
to a snarl. Dubosc stood aside in watchful calculation until against the
angry red sunrise in which they floated there flashed the naked red
gleam of steel. Then he stepped between.

"Enough. Fenayrou, put up that knife."

"The dog kicked me!"

"You were at fault," said Dubosc sternly. "Perroquet!"

"Are we all to die that he may sleep?" stormed The Parrot.

"The harm is done. Listen now, both of you. Things are bad enough
already. We may need all our energies. Look about."

* * * * *

They looked and saw the far, round horizon and the empty desert of the
sea and their own long shadows that slipped slowly before them over its
smooth, slow heaving, and nothing else. The land had sunk away from them
in the night--some one of the chance currents that sweep among the
islands had drawn them none could say where or how far. The trap had
been sprung. "Good God, how lonely it is!" breathed Fenayrou in a hush.

No more was said. They dropped their quarrel. Silently they shared their
rations as before, made shift to eat something with their few drops of
water, and sat down to pit themselves one against another in the vital
struggle that each could feel was coming--a sort of tacit test of
endurance.

A calm had fallen, as it does between trades in this flawed belt, an
absolute calm. The air hung weighted. The sea showed no faintest
crinkle, only the maddening, unresting heave and fall in polished
undulations on which the lances of the sun broke and drove in under
their eyelids as white-hot splinters; a savage sun that kindled upon
them with the power of a burning glass, that sucked the moisture from
poor human bits of jelly and sent them crawling to the shelter of their
mats and brought them out again, gasping, to shrivel anew. The water,
the world of water, seemed sleek and thick as oil. They came to loathe
it and the rotting smell of it, and when the doctor made them dip
themselves overside they found little comfort. It was warm, sluggish,
slimed. But a curious thing resulted....

While they clung along the edge of the raft they all faced inboard, and
there sat the black Canaque. He did not join them. He did not glance at
them. He