By the World Forgot: A Double Romance of the East and West

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

Through water-filled eye gate, through numbed arm and bruised body gate, it told its story to the man's brain. That he could read the message, was an evidence of his vital force and infinite determination. A ship's boat, the forward part half under water, yet riding singularly light. He could not yet reason as to what boat it was, or how it came to be there, but the fact was indelibly impressed upon his consciousness. It meant a further respite from death; another temporary stay on their dread journey. They were not beaten yet.

His right arm was useless. He tried desperately to lift it, but could not. He thought it might have been paralyzed, but the pain, when he attempted to move it, suggested to him that it might be broken. He did not dare to let go with his left arm, and yet if he did not draw his fainting companion up on that boat, she would die. They were now surging far to sea, the reflex of the great tidal wave rolling them on.

He could turn his head and see Truda's body half buried in the water. Still holding the boat, which lay across him--he had struck it broadside--with his left hand he worked himself around till the sides running aft embraced him. He felt about with his foot and discovered at once that the after part of the boat was gone. He did not yet have wit enough to determine why the forward part of the boat floated so far out of water. At any rate, he was in a much better position for action.

Pulling and swimming, he got himself well between the two sides, with the bow directly in front of him. Then he drew himself to the right, and, although the pressure by which he held himself by hand and shoulder from washing out of the boat induced the most excruciating pain in his arm, he dared to release his grasp on the gunwale with his left hand. Still holding Truck's golden hair in his teeth, he reached out and drew her forward with his left arm. By an effort--he never knew how to account for the feat of strength--he got her to the boat; then, seizing her under the arms with his left arm, he forced her upon the bow of the boat until her head lay back upon a little flat platform, which he soon discovered was a locker, or compartment in the very eyes of the boat. Thus, himself lying across the boat, holding himself steady by the pressure of his knee and back, and the girl lying along the boat lengthwise, her head on the forward compartment, his left arm holding her, he knew he had done all that was possible. The pain in his right arm and shoulder had passed away, leaving a sort of deadness.

There was a broken thwart just back of him, and he found that he could relax his pressure a little and sink back against this jagged piece of wood without slipping into the sea. It was a good thing, he realized, for the tremendous thrust of his legs against the unsupported side of the boat might have torn apart even the frail support that was left.

In all this, Truda had, as yet, made no sign of life. He was sure that she had not been drowned. He thought the shock, and the battering, and the terror had rendered her unconscious. Whatever it was, there was nothing more that he could do except to hold on in his constricted condition and wait. He told himself a thousand times that it was useless; that it would be, perhaps, best in the end to let go, but the indomitable ego did not sanction that.

Rising and falling on the seas, he could catch glimpses of the island. It was so changed by tidal wave and earthquake that he never could have recognized it. The harbor was gone. Here and there, when they rose on the crest of a wave, he could see the barrier reef. A part of it had been torn away. Where had been a wall was a great concavity that led upward and inward. The earthquake had done that. What had it done to the people of the island? He was too far away by this time to distinguish much except the general transformation.

As they floated on, his eye, ceaselessly roving the waters, caught sight of a brown object rising and falling, tumbling and turning with the helpless look of a once living thing driven and tossed. A freak of the sea brought it nearer. Another freak of the sea turned the brown object over. He saw that it was Hano, dead. He wondered if all the other denizens of the island had met a like fate. Of course, the water could not reach them as it had reached Hano, and Beekman, and Truda, but the earthquake--then, as he speculated hazily, the sun suddenly appeared. The black bank of cloud was riven and torn. Its greater moiety drifted to leeward, driven by some strange and powerful wind of the upper air. Fortunately, where they floated there was but a gentle breeze.

The warmth, the rest, it may be, he knew not what, revived the woman. She opened her eyes, lifted her head, his left arm tightened about her. She bent to him.

"Is this another world?" she gasped brokenly.