Half a mile seaward, where the beam of light ended, a small craft, low down between two crested waves, was speeding toward the gunboat in the face of her fire. The water about her was lashed into turmoil by the hail of projectiles; but she kept on, at locomotive speed, until within a thousand feet of the gunboat, when she turned sharply to starboard, doubled on her track, and raced off to sea, still covered by the search-light and followed by shot and shell while the gunners could see her.
When the gun fire ceased, a hissing of steam could be heard in the distance, and a triumphant Spanish yell answered. The small enemy had been struck, and the gunboat slipped her cable and followed.
The tired brain could not cope with the problem, and again the man slept, to awaken at sunrise with ravenous hunger and thirst, and a memory of what seemed to be horrible dreams,—vague recollections of painful experiences,—torturing labor with aching muscles and blistered hands; harsh words and ridicule from strong, bearded men; and running through and between, the shadowy figures of blue-coated, brass-buttoned men, continually ordering him on, and threatening arrest. The spectacle of the night was as dream-like as the rest; for he remembered nothing of the gunboat which had rescued and marooned him.
His face had lost its yellowish-bronze color, but was pale and emaciated as ever, while his sunken eyes held the soft light which always comes of extreme physical suffering. He was too weak to remain on his feet, but in the effort to do so he spied the cask and bag higher up on the beach and crawled to them. Prying a plug from the bunghole with his knife, he found water, sweet and delicious, which he drank by rolling the cask carefully and burying his lips in the overflow. Evidently some one in authority on the gunboat had decreed that he should not die of hunger or thirst, for the bag contained hard bread.
Stronger after a meal, he climbed the highest sand-dune and studied the situation. An outcropping of coral formed the backbone of the thin crescent which held him, and which was about half a mile between the points. To the south, opening out from the bay, was a clear stretch of sea, green in the sunlight, deep blue in the shadows of the clouds, and on the horizon were a few sails and smoke columns. West and east were other sandy islets and coral reefs, and to the north a continuous line of larger islands which might be inhabited, but gave no indication of it.
Out in the bay, bobbing to the heave of the slight ground-swell, were the three white buoys left by the Spaniards to mark the sunken boats and slipped cable; and far away on the beach, just within the western point, was something long and round, which rolled in the gentle surf and glistened in the sunlight. He knew nothing of buoys, but they relieved his loneliness; they were signs of human beings, who must have placed him there with the bread and water, and who might come for him.
"Wonder if I got pinched again, and this is some new kind of a choky," he mused. "Been blamed sick and silly, and must ha' lost the job and got jailed again. Just my luck! S'pose the jug was crowded and they run me out here. Wish they'd left me a hat. Wonder how long I'm in for this time."
He descended to the beach and found that repeated wettings of his hair relieved him from the headache that the sun's heat was bringing on; and satisfied that the strong hand of local law had again closed over him, he resigned himself to the situation, resenting only the absence of a shade-tree or a hat. "Much better 'n the calaboose in El Paso," he muttered, "or the brickyard in Chicago."
As he lolled on the sand, the glistening thing over at the western point again caught his eye. After a moment's scrutiny he rose and limped toward it, following the concave of the beach, and often pausing to rest and bathe his head. It was a long journey for him, and the tide, at half-ebb when he started, was rising again when he came abreast of the object and sat down to look at it. It was of metal, long and round, rolling nearly submerged, and held by the alternate surf and undertow parallel with the beach, about twenty feet out.
He waded in, grasped it by a T-shaped projection in the middle, and headed it toward the shore. Then he launched it forward with all his strength—not much, but enough to lift a bluntly pointed end out of water as it grounded and exposed a small, four-bladed steel wheel, shaped something like a windmill. He examined this, but could not understand it, as it whirled freely either way and seemed to have no internal connection. The strange cylinder was about sixteen feet long and about eighteen inches in diameter.