At that moment Lang hardly regretted his companions, hardly was thankful of his escape, hardly thought of anything except to be glad to be out of that tearing surf. Brain and wits were numbed. He was cold, wet and intensely uncomfortable. The enormity of the disaster did not impress him at all, but he realized that he was going to perish of exposure unless he could be warmed and dried.
He had thrown himself down, and he lay for some time still before he developed force enough to get on his feet. He had no bones broken, no severe bruises, even, but the strain and shock had left him in a sort of numb collapse.
It was with difficulty that he fumbled for his match box. It was by luck still in his pocket, and was of aluminum, supposed to be water tight. The dozen or so matches did not appear damp, and he looked vaguely about for materials for a fire.
There was plenty of driftwood all along the beach, but it was soaked with rain and sea water. Dense forest covered the slopes rising back from the shore. There must be firewood there, and he made his way across sand and shingle, over a belt of straggling grass, sprinkled with evergreen shrubs, and came to the edge of the woodland.
He expected to find dry branches, twigs, fallen trunks, but everything was wetness. Rain and mist had made a sponge of the forest. He forced his way through the tangle of stunted, bushy conifers that dripped water from their boughs; the ground was spongy underfoot, thick with moss and overgrown with ferns. The fallen trees seemed all mossy, rotten, yielding, and what dead twigs he could find were too damp to be brittle.
As he forced his way farther in, the trees were somewhat larger, but there was the same thick carpeting of luxuriant moss and ferns, the same sodden dankness. White and yellow and red fungi grew on the rotting wood. There were no birds, no sign of animal life, and that whole abominable swamp seemed like a forest in some sunless cavern.
But it was warm here, for the dense jungle shut out all the wind. Shouldering his way about, he came at last upon a tree freshly broken off four feet aboveground, leaving a splintery stump, which oozed with bluish, gummy drops. It was “fat wood,” in fact, and as he realized this he tore off splinters with his fingers and the blade of his pocket knife, heaped them around the fractured end of the trunk, and struck a match.
The resinous stuff flared up furiously. The flames ran over the gummy surface of the damp trunk, and within two minutes he had a roaring and intensely hot fire, such as he would never have thought this saturated forest could produce. He stripped off his outer garments to dry them, and stood in his underclothing, revolving slowly before the blaze, and steaming in its heat.
Vitality flowed back into him with the warmth. His aching limbs were soothed. He tore off armfuls of evergreen branches, shook the damp from them, and tossed them on the fire. When his clothes were nearly dry he put them on again, and sat down, stupid and drowsy. He noticed that the daylight was waning, the fire redder and brighter. The crash and wash of the sea mingled with the sound of the wind in the treetops, and he dozed again and again, finally sinking into a heavy sleep with his back against a tree.
He started up suddenly in a sort of horror, broad awake, feeling as if he had not slept at all. Darkness was all around him, except in the circle of red glow from the low fire, and all the terror of his predicament came down upon him, as if it had been gathering force while he slept.