tiff, salt-clogged
masses that beat wildly about her face. Beyond something rocking between
two wedged sea-chests, but concealed by them, constantly kicked a sodden
foot into the air. Straight ahead, the naked body of a child flashed to
the crest of each wave.

All this destruction ran from north to south between two reefs of black
rock. It edged a broad bow-shaped expanse of sand, snowy, powdery,
hummocky, netted with wefts of black seaweed that had dried to a
rattling stiffness. To the east, this silvery crescent merged finally
with a furry band of vegetation which screened the whole foreground of
the island.

The day was perfect and the scene beautiful. They had watched the sun
come up over the trees at their back. And it was as if they had seen
a sunrise for the first time in their life. To them, it was neither
beautiful nor familiar; it was sinister and strange. A chill, that was
not of the dawn but of death itself, lay over everything. The morning
wind was the breath of the tomb, the smells that came to them from the
island bore the taint of mortality, the very sunshine seemed icy. They
suffered--the five survivors of the night's tragedy--with a scarifying
sense of disillusion with Nature. It was as though a beautiful, tender,
and fondly loved mother had turned murderously on her children, had
wounded them nearly to death, had then tried to woo them to her
breast again. The loveliness of her, the mindless, heartless, soulless
loveliness, as of a maniac tamed, mocked at their agonies, mocked with
her gentle indifference, mocked with her self-satisfied placidity,
mocked with her serenity and her peace. For them she was dead--dead like
those whom we no longer trust.

The sun was racing up a sky smooth and clear as gray glass. It dropped
on the torn green sea a shimmer that was almost dazzling; but ere was
something incongruous about that--as though Nature had covered her
victim with a spangled scarf. It brought out millions of sparkles in the
white sand; and there seemed something calculating about that--as though
she were bribing them with jewels to forget.

"Say, let's cut out this business of going, over and over it," said
Ralph Addington with a sudden burst of irritability. "I guess I could
give up the ship's cat in exchange for a girl or two." Addington's face
was livid; a muscular contraction kept pulling his lips away from his
white teeth; he had the look of a man who grins satanically at regular
interval