At last he reached the little rift in the rim through which the water poured. Wet, bruised, cut, ineffably weary, he fell rather than lay down upon a smooth rock in the narrow ravine through which the stream flowed. He lay there a long time seeking to recover his breath, his strength, his nerve. Finally, he got to his feet again and surveyed the place. He was not yet at the top of the cliffs, but he was in a little ravine which led to the top through which the brook ran and which presented no difficulties compared to those he had surmounted.
The ravine twisted and turned as it ran upward, and he could yet see nothing but rocks ahead of him. With the aid of the boat hook, he followed the twisting, turning rift, or gorge, mounting on easy grades until, at last, he saw the open entrance before him. To his great joy and relief, he discovered that it was framed in the rich and vivid green of the lush growths of the tropics. Trees, bushes, blossoms were there; and, somewhere beyond, a woman! Light, life, humanity, Eden!
He was so overcome that he sank down again, but, with the certain goal before him, he presently rose to his feet and broke into a staggering run. He dashed through the undergrowth, which parted easily before him. He burst his way through more tangled vegetation and finally stopped breathless at the base of a noble palm tree. Ripe cocoanuts had fallen. He had cruised in tropic waters, and the knowledge he had gained was of service. He broke one open. Not even the pineapple he had found the day before tasted so delicious. When he had consumed it, he looked about him.
Yes, this was a paradise. All about him, the farther side being several miles straight away, in a rough, circular shape rose huge walls of stone enclosing the loveliest tropic landscape his eyes had ever looked upon. The one rift in these encircling walls was that through which the brook reached the sea. He could mark its line of silver winding about through the open land before him. The country was not level. It was rolling. Clumps of tall, graceful palms rose here and there.
Upon a tree-crowned little hillock, almost in the center of the vast enclosure, around the foot of which the brook ran, he saw a little cluster of houses, such buildings as he had never seen or heard of in the south seas. Smoke curled out of a real chimney. The place had a familiar look to him. It did not present the appearance of a Polynesian settlement, yet it was not absolutely unlike such, after all. Here and there he marked little stretches of cleared land at the foot of the hillock that looked strangely like cultivated fields. Similar gardens bordered the brook. He rubbed his eyes as he stared, because he seemed to recognize grain and plants with which he was familiar.
As his vision, obscured by his emotions for the moment, cleared, he saw in the distance men and women, brown-skinned people, but a little lighter than the handsome Polynesians with which he was familiar. He heard the bark of a dog.
If this were not the Garden of Eden, it was yet a paradise to that shipwrecked sailor. Yes, a paradise, and lo, before him, even as Eve might have stood before Adam, was the woman whom he had twice seen bathed in the rays of the morning, staring seaward from the high cliff where she had poised herself before his view as a vision--the Spirit of the Island!
CHAPTER XVI
THE SPEECH OF HIS FOREFATHERS
The woman appeared suddenly before him from behind a clump of bushes. She was more surprised than he, for, having seen her before, he had hoped and expected to meet her. Nothing whatever had occurred to suggest to her his presence on the island. Besides, he had seen many women like her, and in the familiar dress of the south seas. She had never seen a man like him; never a white man; never a clothed man. She stopped and stared at him; not in any alarm, apparently, but in great surprise and astonishment. She made no movement to approach nearer, and he remained rooted to his place, as well. Each one had time to take in every detail of the other, and this is what he saw: