alysing, first, the effect produced upon me by the
cessation of the wind, and next, the joy which was mine from resting on
the mattress made by Maud's hands. When I had dressed and opened the
door, I heard the waves still lapping on the beach, garrulously attesting
the fury of the night. It was a clear day, and the sun was shining. I
had slept late, and I stepped outside with sudden energy, bent upon
making up lost time as befitted a dweller on Endeavour Island.

And when outside, I stopped short. I believed my eyes without question,
and yet I was for the moment stunned by what they disclosed to me.
There, on the beach, not fifty feet away, bow on, dismasted, was a
black-hulled vessel. Masts and booms, tangled with shrouds, sheets, and
rent canvas, were rubbing gently alongside. I could have rubbed my eyes
as I looked. There was the home-made galley we had built, the familiar
break of the poop, the low yacht-cabin scarcely rising above the rail.
It was the _Ghost_.

What freak of fortune had brought it here--here of all spots? what chance
of chances? I looked at the bleak, inaccessible wall at my back and know
the profundity of despair. Escape was hopeless, out of the question. I
thought of Maud, asleep there in the hut we had reared; I remembered her
"Good-night, Humphrey"; "my woman, my mate," went ringing through my
brain, but now, alas, it was a knell that sounded. Then everything went
black before my eyes.

Possibly it was the fraction of a second, but I had no knowledge of how
long an interval had lapsed before I was myself again. There lay the
_Ghost_, bow on to the beach, her splintered bowsprit projecting over the
sand, her tangled spars rubbing against her side to the lift of the
crooning waves. Something must be done, must be done.

It came upon me suddenly, as strange, that nothing moved aboard. Wearied
from the night of struggle and wreck, all hands were yet asleep, I
thought. My next thought was that Maud and I might yet escape. If we
could take to the boat and make round the point before any one awoke? I
would call her and start. My hand was lifted at her door to knock, when
I recollected the smallness of the island. We could never hide ourselves
upon it. There was nothing for us but the wide raw ocean. I thought of
our snug little huts, our supplies of meat and oil and moss and firewood,
and I knew that we could never survive the wintry sea and the great
storms which were to come.