The day passed, as had the other terrible days which had preceded it, in scanning alternately the ocean and the forest's edge—the one for a ship and the other for the cruel death which he momentarily expected to see stalk out of the dreary shades to claim him.
A more practical and a braver man would have constructed some manner of shelter in which he might have spent his nights in comparative safety and comfort, but Waldo Emerson's education had been conducted along lines of undiluted intellectuality—pursuits and knowledge which were practical were commonplace, and commonplaces were vulgar. It was preposterous that a Smith-Jones should ever have need of vulgar knowledge.
For the twenty-second time since the great wave had washed him from the steamer's deck and hurled him, choking and sputtering, upon this inhospitable shore, Waldo Emerson saw the sun sinking rapidly toward the western horizon.
As it descended the young man's terror increased, and he kept his eyes glued upon the spot from which the shadow had emerged the previous evening.
He felt that he could not endure another night of the torture he had passed through four times before. That he should go mad he was positive, and he commenced to tremble and whimper even while daylight yet remained. For a time he tried turning his back to the forest, and then he sat huddled up gazing out upon the ocean; but the tears which rolled down his cheeks so blurred his eyes that he saw nothing.
Finally he could endure it no longer, and with a sudden gasp of horror he wheeled toward the wood. There was nothing visible, yet he broke down and sobbed like a child, for loneliness and terror.
When he was able to control his tears for a moment he took the opportunity to scan the deepening shadows once more.
The first glance brought a piercing shriek from his white lips.
The thing was there!
The young man did not fall groveling to the sand this time—instead, he stood staring with protruding eyes at the vague form, while shriek after shriek broke from his grinning lips.