"No, we were overturned in the breakers, but were washed up—flung up—how, I cannot tell. The wind was frightful. It must have blown us out of the surf and along with the water that was being driven up and over into the lagoon. The first I knew, I was behind a little knoll with Winthrope. Tom was near—in a pool. He—he crawled out. It was nearly dark. We were all so beaten and exhausted that we slept until morning. When we awoke, there was no sign of—of any one else, or of the boat—nothing; only the top of the highest mast sticking up above the water, out beside the reef. Tom swam out to it; but he couldn't get anything—even he couldn't."
"Swam out, you say? These waters swarm with sharks. They're keen to nip a swimmer!"
The girl's eyes flashed. "Do you believe he'd fear them?—that he'd fear anything?"
"Not he! I fancy I ought to know, if any one. Knocked about with him, half 'round the world. I dare say he's told you."
"Would it be like him to claim the credit of your friendship? No! Before, on the steamer, we had mistaken him to be—to be what he appears to strangers—rough, almost uncouth. Yet even that frightful morning—it was among the swamps, ten miles or more up the coast. He carried us safe out of them, me nearly all the way—out of the bog and water, safe to the palms; and he as much tortured with thirst as were we!"
"Fancy! No joke about that—thirst!"
"Yet it was only the beginning of what he did for us. Starvation and wild beasts and snakes and the fever—he saved us from all. Yet he had nothing to begin with—no tools or weapons, only his burning glass. Can you wonder that I—that I—"
She stopped and looked down, the color mounting swiftly under the dark coat of tan that covered the exquisite complexion he remembered so pleasantly.
"My word!" he remonstrated, amazed and disquieted. "Surely not that!
It's—it's impossible! It can't be possible!"
"Do you think so?" she whispered. "If you but knew the half—the tenth—of what he has done!"