"Not yet," answered the man.
"How did we come here?" Before he could answer, she cried, "I remember. The wave. What is this?" she asked after a time.
"A boat," he answered, and then he knew that it was the forward half of the wrecked whaleboat which had brought him to the island, had landed on the barrier, had been torn from the pinnacles of rock by the same sea that had overwhelmed them, and which had been thrust into his hand for their salvation.
"We shall die here in the water," said the girl, "but we shall die together."
The man shook his head.
"I think not. God, our God, has preserved us so far. He has given us this poor support. It can not be that this is the end."
It was almost the end of Beekman, in spite of his brave words; for, now that Truda was safe and alive, now that he had achieved the impossible, now that, by God's will and her lover's help, she had been brought through the maelstrom, he fainted dead away. His head fell back. His knees relaxed. His hand unclasped. His arm released her. But for that broken thwart, he would have slid away and out of sight. It was Truda's turn. She caught him by the shoulder. She crouched down on the forward compartment and held him until consciousness returned. When he could think coherently, he remembered how he had put the air-tight tanks back, and he blessed God for having inspired him to that, at the time, useless action. It was that air-tight compartment which held them. Truda dragged his head free of the water and held him there until he recovered his strength a little. The sharp pain in his arm, which had been numbed, helped to keep him from fainting again.
And so they drifted side by side, a naked man and woman, as they might have come from a Garden of Eden, on the poor shattered remains of a small boat, their weight keeping it awash in the long, still rolling, but gradually subsiding waves, thanking God for life, for that poor support, and for love. And by and by the night fell, and still they clung to each other, floating on calming seas, until presently the boat came to a rest beneath the tropic stars staring down upon these jettisoned inhabitants of that island paradise, these bits of human flotsam kept above the waters by love and God.
BOOK IV
"I've a neater, sweeter maiden,
In a cleaner, greener land"