"It cannot wash it all away, can it?" she gasped, when they had wormed their way back to shelter.
"It never has done yet anyway," he said cheerfully, as he squeezed windy tears out of his smarting eyes. "Now, dear, change all your things at once. We are wet through to the bone."
"It was very wonderful. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. But I'm glad we're ashore," and she slipped away into her own room.
That was the first of the winter storms, and there were many like it. But they bore them equably. They were in splendid health, the weather at its worst was never very cold, indeed the gales were more to their taste than the smothering chill of the frequent fogs. They had all they needed,—food and fire, and light and books, a weather-tight house, and one another.
If they lacked much of what their former life had taught them to consider necessary, they had more than all that former life had given them, and they were happy.
LIV
Between the storms and fog-spells, they tramped to and fro discovering the changes wrought in their island, and many a strange thing their wanderings showed them.
One great gale which lasted a full week strewed the south-west Point with wreckage as thickly almost as the great pile beyond. Their hearts ached at thought of the still greater loss it represented, of which the proofs were never lacking. The chaotic bristle was studded with the bodies of the drowned, and the sight sent them home sorrowfully, yet marvelling the more at their own deliverance, and still more grateful for it.
"We are miracles, without a doubt," said Wulf gravely, as they went back home. "No one else gets here alive, you see.... I was the first miracle. Macro was the second," and he told her what she had not known before, how he had contrived to save the mate, and of his regret that it had not been old Jock Steele the carpenter, who would have been a blessing to them instead of a curse. "And you are the third and best miracle of all," he said, clasping her arm more tightly under his own. "God! what a difference it has made!" he said fervently. "Alone here one might go mad. In time one most certainly would. See how good a work you are accomplishing by simply remaining alive. Instead of being a melancholy madman you make me the happiest man on earth. Oh, the God-given wonder of a woman! Truly you are the greatest miracle of all, and He has been good to me."
"And to me. If you had not been here I should have been dead and we would never have met. Perhaps He sent us to one another."