Wonder took possession of him. “Gaw!” he cried: “Wot a fight it's been! Smashing up the poor fellers! 'Eadlong! The airships—the fliers and all. I wonder what happened to the Zeppelin?... And that chap Kurt—I wonder what happened to 'im? 'E was a good sort of chap, was Kurt.”
Some phantom of imperial solicitude floated through his mind. “Injia,” he said....
A more practical interest arose.
“I wonder if there's anything to open one of these tins of corned beef?”
3
After he had feasted, Bert lit a cigarette and sat meditative for a time. “Wonder where Grubb is?” he said; “I do wonder that! Wonder if any of 'em wonder about me?”
He reverted to his own circumstances. “Dessay I shall 'ave to stop on this island for some time.”
He tried to feel at his ease and secure, but presently the indefinable restlessness of the social animal in solitude distressed him. He began to want to look over his shoulder, and, as a corrective, roused himself to explore the rest of the island.
It was only very slowly that he began to realise the peculiarities of his position, to perceive that the breaking down of the arch between Green Island and the mainland had cut him off completely from the world. Indeed it was only when he came back to where the fore-end of the Hohenzollern lay like a stranded ship, and was contemplating the shattered bridge, that this dawned upon him. Even then it came with no sort of shock to his mind, a fact among a number of other extraordinary and unmanageable facts. He stared at the shattered cabins of the Hohenzollern and its widow's garment of dishevelled silk for a time, but without any idea of its containing any living thing; it was all so twisted and smashed and entirely upside down. Then for a while he gazed at the evening sky. A cloud haze was now appearing and not an airship was in sight. A swallow flew by and snapped some invisible victim. “Like a dream,” he repeated.
Then for a time the rapids held his mind. “Roaring. It keeps on roaring and splashin' always and always. Keeps on....”