Where the Pavement Ends

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A Rex Ingram—Metro Picture. Where the Pavement Ends. A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.
AUTHOR OF IN DARK PLACES, Etc.
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, But in another country, as he said, Bore a bright golden flow'r.... Comus
PUBLISHERS GROSSET & DUNLAP NEW YORK Made in the United States of America COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY JOHN RUSSELL
Published, October, 1919 PublishedSecond Printing, September, 1921 PublishedThird Printing, March, 1922 PublishedFourth Printing, November, 1922 PublishedFifth Printing, April, 1923 PublishedSixth Printing, August, 1923 English Edition Published May 1921 London, Thornton Butterworth Ltd.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The raft might have been taken for a swath of cut sedge or a drifting tangle of roots as it slid out of the shadowy river mouth at dawn and dipped into the first ground swell. But while the sky brightened and the breeze came fresh offshore it picked a way among shoals and swampy islets with purpose and direction, and when at last the sun leaped up and cleared his bright eye of the morning mist it had passed the wide entrance to the bay and stood to open sea.
It was a curious craft for such a venture, of a type that survives here and there in the obscure corners of the world. The coracle maker would have scorned it. The first navigating pithecanthrope built nearly as well with his log and bush. A mat of pandanus leaves served for its sail and a paddle of niaouli wood for its helm. But it had a single point of real seaworthiness. Its twin floats, paired as a catamaran, were woven of reed bundles and bamboo sticks upon triple rows of bladders. It was light as a bladder itself, elastic, fit to ride any weather. One other quality this raft possessed which recommended it beyond all comfort and all safety to its present crew. It was very nearly invisible. They had only to unstep its mast and lie flat in the cup of its soggy platform and they could not be spied half a mile away.