Soon the hole was sufficiently deep, and he placed the body in it and covered it with earth. To make sure that the grave would not be molested, he brought what portions of twisted beams he could carry away from the wreckage that strewed the beach and piled upon it until a great heap marked the place of burial.
Twice the sun sank, and twice it made radiant the heavens before the task was completed to his liking.
He had been mad, crazed by grief and misery, before he found the body of his son. He was further poisoned by the wounds he had received, and because of them he had gone mad as a beast and not as a man. Flakes of foam were thick and white upon his beard; he had a frightful manner of swinging his head from side to side, snapping with his teeth at whatever came within reach.
It was the third day since he had been so. He remained in the vicinity of the solitary grave, not even leaving it to go for water,—that he no longer needed. The grave continued to hold a meaning, though he was far beyond the saying or the knowing why he stayed. It was blind obedience to an impulse or an emotion that survived the extinction of the last spark of human intelligence, in him quenched forever.
His roving glance that shifted constantly, happened to see a cloud of smoke that ascended from a point a mile or so farther up the coast than he had yet gone. For a space this wonder fixed his vacillating interest. A dulled intelligence stirred within him. It drew him in that direction. He went slowly at first, on hands and feet, then standing, he hurried forward at a run almost.
On a tongue of land that projected out boldly into the ocean, a great bonfire had been built and set alight. As the maniac approached, he saw the builder of the fire where he stood between it and the sea, his eyes fastened upon a passing ship. At first the maniac paid no heed to him, but walked around and around the blazing pile. He was unseen, for the man had no thought but for the ship that drew in, guided by flame and smoke. Finally he became aware that he was not alone. He moved back to the fire and Rear-ton saw his face,—the face he had seen last when he had bent over his dead wife where she had fallen. He gazed at his former friend stolidly for a time with unwavering insistence, but by degrees a partial capacity for reason dawned upon him and with it came a measure of memory and hate.
Meanwhile the man was frozen to the spot, horror-stricken by fright of what was revealed to him.
It may have been a minute, it may have been ten, that the maniac and man stood staring at each other; the former with foaming lips that sweated drops of blood; the latter with cheeks that blanched and paled. The man turned toward the ship. Its coming promised safety, should it come in season; and while he did so Rearton advanced a single step, pausing when the man faced him again.
There was power in sanity. It exercised a certain mastery over him. Man and beast stood looking fixedly each at the other, but he could not resist the desire to turn and see from time to time the movements of the ship, and whenever he did so Rearton, crouching low, came closer. For an hour this was the fashion of his advance, and in that hour the man had looked at the approaching ship just thirty times. The maniac had made just thirty forward steps that counted thirty yards. Perhaps there remained ten that separated them.
The ship was stationary, and a boat had left its side and started in. Strong as was his temptation the man dared not look. He kept his face turned to the maniac. He put one foot behind him and fell back in the direction of the beach, moving with the utmost caution. With equal caution the maniac followed.