Edwin Balmer

“ For the soil which had come to those rocks to support me, was all thin sand; and there was nothing but a few rank grasses and root-things and a few bitter bushes; and a dozen trees, caught and grown large somehow in the crevices of the rocks over the sea. ”

“ You will take him instead straight back to where we are all bound, together, and where—where that man, whose shell only lies back there, covered, on his island of Hope, lives in a nation’s body and waits for this boy whom he saved to come to him and tell him there and thank him. ”

“ He had come there, like myself, with just what a civilized man has in his pockets when a sea suddenly sweeps him from a ship—a pocket-knife and a pencil, a few coins and scraps of paper. And he had found there—what I have said—a few roots and bitter berries and bark and sometimes a fish; and for company, besides the gulls, maybe a dozen south sea parrots, blown like himself from some thousand-mile-away place, afraid to go back and breeding there. ”

“ It was bound to the strut-sticks as the strut-sticks were also bound to the main log, by thick-twisted and vine ropes wound about again and again. The square of yellow sail was also woven from dried and plaited grass. There seemed to be dried bits of roots or bark or some sort of food in the bottom.
If Adam, driven from the garden of Eden, had had to take boat, we agreed that Eve could have complained, properly, of such a conveyance. So we stared at the single man it bore with still more wondering surprise and curiosity as he bumped alongside, now, and caught our rope and we drew him up. ”

“ So I sank down and cried again—but this time from the different cause—for I saw a hut, a cabin, yes; a human house surely!—under the trees and beyond the bushes. For somehow and sometime not only soil and grass and growing things and trees had come there to save me; but men, too—men had come there, too, before me to wait for me and surely—surely to save me!
“So I shouted as loud as I could to them and threw myself into the water again to give myself up to them. And I caught the steep rocks at the shore and climbed up, as strong as I ever was ”

“ Bassett answered. “He’s stopped jumping and showing himself now. He knows, of course, we’ve seen him.”
He watched us and the object at which we stood staring; then smiled, with a sudden impulse, at our Chief who was arguing with him the moment before.
“You were trying to tell me a minute back, sir,” he said, “how arousin’ and incentin’ all what you’ve been finding under the sea is. This, sir,” he nodded ahead to the approaching logs, “is the first thing we’ve found on top or looked for since we sailed. ”

“ Two logs with a patch of yellow sail above them, sir!” The hail came back as the skipper screwed his own glass to his eye. “And I make out a man, I think, sir, a man with—”
“I make him myself now!” the skipper acknowledged as he stared. And, “That’s very well!” he approved as, under the mate’s orders, the ship began to swerve. The bells were clanging in our engine-room and we could feel the screws push a little more insistently as the object abeam swung, apparently, as we swerved and crept to the bow till it stopped dead ahead. ”

“ I can only take it where these gentlemen say; but—but if I had, I'd take you back to let y’ tell him, boy—yes, to let y’ tell him now and thank him—as well as y’ can.”
“No, Bassett,”—our Chief had cleared his throat and raised his head quickly to meet the skipper’s challenge. “No, Bassett.” he said, “you wouldn’t take him back to that island—to that little lonely island of his Hope, lost back there, to tell Aim there or thank him—there. You wouldn’t yourself. ”

“ So I grew angry at the parrots who kept fluttering down to me and flinging at me his fool determinations which could not save him and had spared him—nothing.
“I searched the island finally again for any chance of saving myself. There were the dozen larger, besides the smaller, trees; five of each he had burned down and evidently used up in his fires afterwards, as I could find no trace of their timber. could not make a raft from the rest; but it was as good a raft as I might make, that I had left te climb these rocks for refuge, two thousand miles, at least from any shore, I knew. No ”

“ And what'll you lay me you wont, all of you, want to tell what that man, living on the top with his logs, found, before you'll tell what you’ve been pulling up with all your wires and drums and buckets and machines?”
“We'll lay you,” we all boasted in turn; and laughed and “laid” with our Chief, as he put down the glass, the stake we named. For the Chief did not bet.
We were drawing rapidly upon the logs with the yellow grass sail, and presently drew up, with reversing engines, beside it. ”

“ And finally, of course, one by one we began to recollect ourselves again, and to think triumphantly of our new sounding charts and specimens. But the Chief still stood looking out. over the surface of the seas that he had sounded; and as he stood there, his hand in his coat-pocket played absently with the coins he held awaiting the outcome of our wager. And as he touched them, then, he, too, seemed to recollect himself, and drawing forth his hand, gazed at the coins, recognizingly. { [dhr] } “I must pay these to Bassett to-morrow,” he said, quietly. ”

“ So as I sat there, gentlemen,” the boy raised his head again, “trying to decide the way, one of the parrots, which had been his only company—one of them came to me, not at all afraid, and stood looking at me ”