Dawn on Angel Island.
A gigantic rose bloomed at the horizon-line; half its satin petals lay on the iron sea, half on the granite sky. The gold-green morning star was fading slowly. From the island came a confusion of bird-calls.
Addington emerged from the Clubhouse. Without looking about him, he staggered down the path to the Camp. The fire was still burning. The other men lay beside it, moveless, asleep with their clothes on. They waked as his footsteps drew near. Livid with fatigue, their eyelids dropping in spite of their efforts, they jerked upright.
“How are they?” Billy asked.
“The turn has come,” Ralph answered briefly. As he spoke he crumpled slowly into a heap beside the fire. “They’re going to live.”
The others did not speak; they waited.
“Julia did it. She had dozed off. Suddenly in the middle of the night, she sat upright. She was as white as marble but there was a light back of her face. And with all that wonderful hair falling down—she looked like an angel. She called to them one by one. And they answered her, one by one. You never heard—it was like little birds answering the mother-bird’s call. At first their voices were faint and weak. But she kept encouraging them until they sat up—God, it was—.”
Ralph could not go on for a while.
“She gave them a long talk—she was so weak she had to keep stopping—but she went right on—and they listened. Of course I couldn’t understand a word. But I knew what she said. In effect, it was: ‘We cannot die. We must all live. We cannot leave any one of us here alone. Promise me that you will get well!’ She pledged them to it. She made them take an oath, one after the other. Oh, they were obedient enough. They took it.”
He stopped again.