Francis Lynde

“ Yes; there is another man.”
“Ah!” said I. “That makes a difference. Do I know the other man?”
“I—I think not. But we can leave him out. He doesn't care for me and I am sure he doesn't know that I care for him. I said I don't dislike Wickham and I don't—I hate him!”
Again there was a silence. From where we were sitting on the warm beach sand I could see dimly that this side of the island was indented by a deep bay and the glare of the camp fire was in the bight of it. ”

“ What I don't know about tropical plants and trees, as to their names and such, would fill a shelf in a library, but I can testify that I met and wrestled with at least a hundred varieties of vegetable obstacles in the next half hour, from invisible trees that took advantage of the black darkness to get squarely in the way to thorny ground palms that bayoneted me in passing and tangles of vine and brier that caught and tripped me at every step. ”

“ Not to miss a chance while the seas were still sweeping in strongly enough to lift the schooner's stern we put the motor in the reverse and tried to back off. But in a few minutes Brill shouted down to me that it was no good and I stopped the motor and climbed to the deck. Brill, forgetting that but for the Providential “seventh” wave he might have joined the rest of us in providing food for the fishes, was exploding in blasphemies so horrible as to make even Dorgan call him down.
“Shut up, you cockroach!” he roared. “Ain't it enough that you've still got the breath o' life in you? ”

“ It was the rawest of tragedies; and so utterly uncalled for with a good sea boat like the Waikiki.
“Did the yacht sink?” I asked.
“No. We all thought she was sinking but she wasn't. She is lying out beyond this point just before us, some distance from shore—a wreck, I suppose.”
“How many of you were saved?”
“All of us cabin people and seven of the crew. And a single day without food has turned us all into savages.” ”

“ Wickham kept harping on the one string continually. If we were once married it would straighten out everything. His father couldn't go to extremes, as he was meaning to, if it became a family matter—things like that. I couldn't do anything but fight for time. I told myself that the voyage couldn't last forever and that I'd see daddy in Havana and find out just how much of all this that Wickham was saying was true. ”

“ If the island were inhabited we could live; if it were not—well in that case we should at least know what we were up against. Accordingly I detailed Pedro to stay in the schooner with Dorgan and took Brill and José with me on an exploring expedition.
As a means of acquiring any definite in formation about our landfall the tramp ashore was a conspicuous failure. Taking the northeastern beach first we came at a distance of perhaps half a mile from the schooner to a place where the outer reef drew in so close to the mainland as scarcely to break the huge seas which were still tumbling in. ”

“ Most of the crew crowded into it, every man fighting to save himself and paying no attention whatever to anybody else. A sea crushed that boat against the side of the yacht and I think everybody in it was drowned. Then the other was lowered and the rest of us scrambled into it and got away somehow. But when our boat was finally flung up on the beach it was smashed into kindling wood. ”