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

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

The first gray of morning brought him a faint hope of life. The light of day showed him the whaleboat, her bottom hopelessly shattered, caught firmly on a rocky reef. Around him, once in a while over him, great waves were breaking; the whole mighty Pacific sweeping down from the line falling in crashing assault upon this barrier of jagged stones. Back of him was the sea--unbroken to the horizon--over which he had come. In front of him stretched a space of still water. On the other side of this lagoon rose huge, precipitous rocks, bare, gaunt, forbidding. As he stood up tremblingly and peered beneath his hand he thought he could detect at the foot of these mighty cliffs a stretch of golden sand.

Even with the inspiration of land at last and probable food and drink it was difficult in his lack of strength to wrench loose a shattered plank. Still, by desperate effort he accomplished that at last. With that to buoy him up he stumbled across the reef and launched into the smooth waters of the lagoon. The swim would have been nothing under ordinary circumstances, but in his terrible prostration, even with the aid of the plank, it was a long, difficult passage. Half a dozen times he was on the point of throwing up his hands and going under, but something--love of life, hope indestructible, eternal, remains of determination, instinctive unwillingness to acknowledge himself beaten--kept him up. He pressed on through the smooth waters of the lagoon. Finally his feet touched the strand. Standing trembling but triumphant a few moments to recover himself, he staggered across it.

He discovered as he did so an opening in the rock concealed previously from him by an overlap of the cliff. The rift in the cliff wall was perhaps thirty yards wide. It could only be seen from one direction. The waters of the lagoon ran inward through it. The sand narrowed and stopped at the opening. From, that beach he could not see within. Climbing a little distance up the edge of the cliff and peering around it, he saw at the end of the inlet a deep bay, a harbor roughly circular, perhaps half a mile in diameter. He surveyed it long and carefully in the half light which made it impossible to see clearly.

As nearly as he could guess the height of the cliffs ranged from three hundred to five hundred feet. In niches and shelves here and there a few bits of green appeared. The tops of the cliffs seemed as bare as the sides. No way to surmount them appeared. Sometimes they ran straight down into the deep, dark water. At the base of the walls here and there were little stretches of sand. The place was still dark and gloomy, and somehow terrible. The sunlight had not penetrated into it yet; would not, he judged, for some time, or until the sun got into exactly the right position to shine through that narrow opening.

An unusual mental alertness had taken the place of his lethargy. Hope had made the change. He must, first of all, find water, then food, and then he must reach the top of the cliffs. On the other side of the shoulder of wall where he stood ran one of the stretches of sand. How could he get around that shoulder and pass through that opening? He did not dare to attempt to swim around it yet. He must climb over it. Painfully, with ebbing strength but with growing hope, he managed at the imminent risk of his life to climb around the point and finally set foot upon that narrow strip of sand. He looked back only to find the wall behind him rising sheer above his head, just as the walls opposite had. It was like being imprisoned in a vast tower, one side of which had been riven from top to bottom. And the dark, forbidding gloom oppressed him still more. The morning was still, there was no breeze in that enclosed place, but he shivered nevertheless and would have given anything for human companionship. He even tried to cry aloud to break the appalling stillness, but no sound came from cracked lips and parched, constricted throat. Was he to fail, having come so far?

In frantic terror he broke into a feeble run aimlessly forward. Rounding another jut of the wall, he saw that which meant life--a slender stream of water falling in long, broken leaps from the top to the bottom of the wall. It had cut a channel through the sand and was lost in the bay. At the sight, strange to say, his strength left him. Fear had drawn him on and now fear and everything else were forgot. He fell to his knees, but still had strength and determination to crawl on. At last he reached it, fell on his face, and drank. It needed all his resolution, all his courage, all his mental and physical power not to drink and die. He knew he must drink sparingly and he did so.

When he had satisfied his thirst by slow degrees, he sat down on the sand to consider his situation. The cool, sweet water put new life into him. He was suddenly conscious of a terrible, gripping hunger, but the first and greatest of his needs had been satisfied. There must be some way to the top of those cliffs. Where there was fresh water there must be life. No island in the south seas could be so lonely, so sequestered, so unvisited as not to have a life and vegetation of its own. Wherever there was water and earth, especially in those latitudes, were to be found the kindly fruits thereof.

He decided that he would go back to the whaleboat, that he would get what crumbs that were left of the hard bread that he had been unable to eat and the remaining scraps of the salt meat that had choked him. He could swallow them now. Then he would come back and after he had been strengthened by his meal he would examine every foot of the cliffs to find a way upward. Meanwhile, he would rest a little. He threw himself down on the sand on his back and stared upward. As he did so he noticed the sun had reached such a position that it shone full through the entrance, suddenly illuminating the whole gloomy tower with light and changing the entire aspect of it.

He put his hand behind him to raise himself, intending to take advantage of the flood of light, which he saw would be there but for a short time, for a further inspection of the place. But his eyes were still cast upward. In the center of his vision the top of the cliff cut the brightening sky. Suddenly, as if formed instantly out of thin air, over the edge appeared a human figure. This figure was poised upon the very highest point of the towerlike wall, and was staring seaward through the great rift.

In the clear air and the bright sunlight he had not the slightest difficulty in discerning details. Perhaps his sight was sharpened by his anxiety and desire.