Wearily, Bill shut his eyes, gasping for breath, and felt the power melting away from his numbed limbs. Then hazily he noticed that the island seemed nearer—or was that but a last illusion before the end? No! The rocks were towering above him. He realized that he had been swept around on the current to the seaward side, and that the mainland was out of sight. With his last atom of strength, he tried to strike out toward that shore, but the place seemed to be slipping away from him again. There was a throbbing in his ears, growing louder and louder. A vague, dreamlike impression of touching the gray side of some craft—then his senses left him.
CHAPTER VII
THE MYSTERIOUS TRIO
The whitewashed wooden walls of a hut, and a sickly sting of brandy in his throat, were Bill’s first impressions of life on awakening. An old brown face with blue eyes and a tuft of white beard below the chin looked down at him.
“You’re better,” the man said grimly. “But I caught sight of you none too soon.”
“Where am I?” Bill managed to ask.
“Never mind. Drink this.” As the man lifted a tin of boiling coffee from a little stove, Bill saw that he was lean and lanky and dressed in a sailor’s blue jersey and top-boots. “It’s heat you need, not information.”
Bill sat up. A warm sweater and flannel trousers now covered him, and by the time he had finished the coffee, he felt more like taking a sane interest in his surroundings. He was about to try to express his thanks to the old man when there was a knock on the door. The old fellow opened the door and stepped outside.
A girl stood in the doorway. She was dressed in a white skirt and sweater. She had a smooth olive skin and her black hair was cut close to her head. Bill decided that she was pretty, and that she must be about sixteen. Her eyes were smiling at him as he got to his feet.
“Please sit down,” she cried, for Bill was gripping a beam at his side to steady himself. “Why, you must be feeling perfectly dreadful! Aren’t you hungry? Won’t you let me get you something to eat?”
Bill was sure he detected the faintest shadow of a foreign accent in her speech. He smiled. “In a little while, perhaps, thank you,” he said. “My head is a bit on the blink. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank that old man—”