CHAPTER III 



Shipwreck 



In the late afternoon of the following day we slowly climbed 

 a low sandy bluff. At the top we paused a moment and then 

 sank wearily to the ground. Before us the sand sloped away 

 to a wide beach on which the shadows were lengthening 

 rapidly. Even as we watched, little breakers slipped up the 

 damp soil, hissed and sighed as they passed over the sand 

 grains, and slid back again. As they slid they left on the beach 

 myriad small objects— queer-shaped things that turned and 

 rolled in the tide. Wreckage! Flotsam and jetsam that the sea 

 had done with and was giving up to the land. Bits of spars, rope, 

 sodden books, tin cans, instruments, bottles, boxes— and a pic- 

 ture of the Gulf Stream showing a man lying on the deck of a 

 dismasted vessel, sullenly watching a shark that was circling 

 by. The sea's turn to laugh. Journey's end. 



Journey's end, indeed. Beyond the waves that sighed on the 

 beach, beyond a lagoon of pale green water, glistened a line of 

 seething white surf. A white frothy Hne that moved and pulsed, 

 and emitted a constant throaty roar. The sound of breakers 

 crashing on a coral reef. Squarely in the center of that seeth- 

 ing line lay all that remained of a stout vessel. Each wave that 

 rolled in lifted the hull a foot or so and with a resounding crash 

 dropped it heavily into the spreading branches of coral. A sad 

 ending for a stout vessel that had weathered a great winter 

 storm and had gallantly carried its crew to safety when larger 

 and better manned ships had gone to the bottom. 



Journey's end and dream's end. There would be no sailing 

 the isles of the Indies. It was a bitter dose. The irony of the 



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