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

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

"This is the man we have been seeking," he said to Mr. Maynard.

"Good God!" exclaimed Maynard, looking hard in turn. "Yes," he added, "it's Beekman!"

CHAPTER XXVII

THE SPEECHLESS CASTAWAYS

It was broad daylight by this time, and the high peak of the island was already visible, although low on the horizon. Ordinarily, the arrival of the castaways would have been a matter of deepest interest to Captain Weatherby, his officers and the men on the ship, but under the circumstances their presence simply meant two more persons to feed and care for. His owner could look after them. Indeed, Captain Weatherby had not left the bridge as the two had been passed aboard, and he had not heard that one of the persons he had picked up was the man for whom they had been combing the seas in an exhaustive search of every island in Polynesia.

He was engaged in the desperate task of getting the sluggish ship to the island, if possible, before she sank. The existence of that island was charted, but it was marked as uninhabited, desolate, completely encircled by a formidable reef and very dangerous. Ships avoided it, giving it a wide berth. It promised them little. Still, in their condition, perhaps a very little meant the wide difference--or is it narrow?--between life and death. A good sailor, like a good doctor, never gives up entirely until the very end. While the ship floats she has life, and while she has life there is hope; but Captain Weatherby was forced to admit to himself that the amount of hope was very small, indeed; that is, for the ship, and not much more, he feared, for her people.

Ordinarily, he could have made the run to the island in half a day. It seemed to him under present conditions he would be fortunate if he reached it by evening, and yet he must reach it before dark if he were to save the lives committed to his care and skill. To make a landing through the breakers on a reef-encircled island by means of an improvised raft would be an almost impossible task in daylight, and under the most favorable circumstances, and quite an impossible task at night in any sort of sea. Consequently, he drove the waterlogged Stephanie as fast as she could be driven in her condition, his chief engineer ably seconding him, employing every expedient to keep up steam and to increase the speed.

Weatherby was a resourceful man. He had spent some years in Cramp's shipyard in Philadelphia, after retiring from the command of great liners. The love of the sea was strong upon him, however, and he had been tempted to the easy and pleasant work of commanding the Stephanie by the munificent offers of Maynard, who, since he owned the biggest yacht afloat, was not satisfied with any but the best captain. Therefore, if Captain Weatherby could find a suitable strip of sand on which to beach the ship, if necessary to careen her, he believed that with his carefully selected force of engineers and mechanics and seamen he could stop the leak and put her in seaworthy condition again. However, that was not to be thought of. That desolate, reef-guarded island toward which they were heading was the only one they could by any possibility hope to reach, and if the charts were true, as they undoubtedly were, it would not afford any facilities whatsoever for such work as would be necessary. It never occurred to him that the earthquake which had raised the tidal wave which had wrought their undoing might have broken the barrier and have changed conditions at the island, so as to provide him with the beach he craved. He was simply going to the island, because, when the ship sank, it would at least enable them to keep alive, for a little while longer, at any rate. Consequently, he paid no attention whatever to the pair he had rescued as he put the ship on her course again.

There were plenty of people capable of looking after them better than he. Indeed, to his casual inspection they seemed to be two islanders, rather fairer of skin than those whom he knew. He wondered how they came to be where they were. He had seen that the wreck which had kept them up was part of a ship's boat and not the remains of a native vessel. It did, indeed, occur to him that possibly they might have come from that island for which he was heading, which might not be uninhabited, after all, but time would soon settle those problems. In the meantime his duty was clear.

Beekman was incapable of recognizing any one. He had been silent enough in the water, but when they got him on deck he had begun to mutter incoherently things they could not understand. Harnash, after his discovery of his identity, seemed incapable of action. The sight of his friend brought back vividly his own perfidy, and the desperate condition in which he saw Beekman to be intensified the swift and sudden recollection of his own baseness. Mr. Maynard had nothing with which to reproach himself, of course, and it was he who first recovered himself and repeated his order that Beekman should be taken to the cabin.