BOOK III
"Where there aren't no Ten Commandments"
CHAPTER XV
THE SPIRIT OF THE ISLAND
Derrick Beekman was astonished beyond measure at the apparition which flashed in view so suddenly far above his head and had almost immediately disappeared. So far as he had been able to view the island, he had not before discovered the slightest evidence of humanity. Indeed, the whole deep cup of the bay was so desolate and forbidding that it had not prepared him for human beings, scarcely for life, even. If he had not yet thought about it at all, he had, nevertheless, a subconsciousness that this was probably a bare and arid rock, volcanic in origin, which the busy little toilers of the sea had surrounded with a coral reef.
He came to believe afterward that this idea was correct, and that the deep bay represented one of the craters of the volcano, one side of which had been riven, by what cause he could not determine, giving access to the ocean. In his terribly weak condition, for when he had slaked his thirst, he was more acutely conscious of his hunger, not to say his starvation, than before, he could only reflect vaguely upon these matters. But one thing was really impressed upon his consciousness; namely, that he had seen a human being; that being was a woman, and that she was white!
He fell back on the sands supine, and lay staring upward. How long he lay there, he could not tell. He had been too amazed even to cry out, if he had possessed the power. And before he could decide upon anything, she was gone. He hoped, of course, that the woman or some of her companions, if she had any, would come again; but the dark, rugged, desolate rock cut the skyline with iron precision, unbroken by anything that had any suggestion of life, as before, when he had first looked upon it. He soon awoke to the realization that there was nothing to be gained by waiting. He must get something to eat to get back some of his strength before he explored the harbor to find a way to the top of the encircling cliffs.
He moved back to the spring and, thanking God for its sweetness, this time drank deeper than before. He took off his salt-encrusted clothes, held them under the falling water until they were clean of the sea marks, and then he plunged his own body in the waterfall. As he intended to swim back to the whaleboat, he laid his clothes out upon some rocks which faced the rift-like opening and through which the morning sun streamed with tropic intensity.
As he walked barefoot through the sand along the bank of the little shallow brook by which the waters that fell from the crest made their way to the sea, his foot struck something sharp that pricked him. He bent over it at once, instantly curious. In the situation in which he found himself, the slightest thing was of moment, or might be. He laughed as he recognized it. He eagerly tore from its bed in the sand--a pineapple!
Templin had replaced the sheath knife that had been taken from him by the captain, and it hung in his belt on the rocks behind him where he had left his clothes. To get it, to open it with nervous fingers, to cut into the heart of the pineapple, to bury his face greedily in the fragrant deliciousness of it, to eat it with almost animal-like ferocity, was inevitable in so ravenous a man. When he had devoured it to the last edible scrap, he searched the banks of the creek for other fruit, possible flotsam and jetsam from the upland; but the search produced nothing that met his fancy, for what he did find was decayed and useless.