Just before dark he caught sight of a small sailboat slipping easily along, headed, he thought, for the larger bay on beyond the narrow point of land.
Steve hailed the craft. One man in the stern of the boat stood up and gazed shoreward through a glass. Rush swung his arms and shouted that he wanted to be taken off the island. The man in the stern calmly closed his glasses and sat down, while the boat held steadily to her course.
Steve sat down, too. He was not so much discouraged as he was angry and disgusted.
"Why couldn't he have sailed somewhere so I wouldn't have seen him, instead of drifting by so tantalizingly near me?" he cried.
There being no answer to the question, Rush began looking about for a place to sleep. The best he could do was a spot just under a ledge of rock. The boy went down to the beach and brought back his life raft, the piece of a deck house door on which he had floated ashore. This he carried up to his bedroom under the ledge and stood it against the rocks.
"That will do very well, in the absence of something better," he decided grinning as broadly as the drawn muscles of his face would permit him to do.
Then Steve crawled under this rude shelter, drawing his coat as closely about him as possible and went sound asleep.
Steve was exhausted bodily and mentally, and it was not to be wondered at considering what he had gone through in the last twelve hours. Besides this he had had nothing to eat since supper on the previous day.
The following morning Rush did not awaken until the sunlight warmed his bedroom. He crawled out, rubbed his eyes and looked about him.
"Well, if it isn't morning! But maybe it's the next morning; maybe I slept a day and a night."