Strong Hearts | Page 7

look for a sail.
He strove in vain to labor. The pleasures of toil were as stale as those of
idleness. His books were put aside with a shudder, and he walked
abroad with a changed gait; the old extortioner was levying on his
nerves. And on his brain. He dreamed that night of war times; found
himself commander of a whole battery of heavy guns, and lo, they were
all quaker cannon. When he would have fled, monstrous terrors met
him at every turn, till he woke and could sleep no more. Dawn widened
over sky and sea, but its vast beauty only mocked the castaway. All day
long he wandered up and down and along and across his glittering
prison, no tiniest speck of canvas, no faintest wreath of smoke, on any
water's edge; the horror of his isolation growing-growing?-like the
monsters of his dream, and his whole nature wild with a desire which
was no longer a mere physical drought, but a passion of the soul, that
gave the will an unnatural energy and set at naught every true interest
of earth and heaven. Again and again he would have shrieked its
anguish, but the first note of his voice rebuked him to silence as if he
had espied himself in a glass. He fell on his face voiceless, writhing,
and promised himself, nay, pledged creation and its Creator, that on the
day of his return to the walks of men he would drink the cup of
madness and would drink it thenceforth till he died.
When night came again he paced the sands for hours and then fell to
work to drag by long and toiling zigzags to a favorable point on the
southern end of the island the mast he had saved, and to raise there a
flag of distress. In the shortness of his resources he dared not choose
the boldest exposures, where the first high wind would cast it down;
but where he placed it it could be seen from every quarter except the
north, and any sail approaching from that direction was virtually sure to
come within hail even of the voice.

Day had come again as he left the finished task, and once more from
the highest wind-built ridge his hungering eyes swept the round sea's
edge. But he saw no sail. Nerveless and exhausted he descended to the
southeastern beach and watched the morning brighten. The breezes,
that for some time had slept, fitfully revived, and the sun leaped from
the sea and burned its way through a low bank of dark and ruddy
clouds with so unusual a splendor that the beholder was in some degree
both quickened and tranquillized. He could even play at self-command,
and in child fashion bound himself not to mount the dunes again for a
northern look within an hour. This southern half circle must suffice.
Indeed, unless these idle zephyrs should amend, no sail could in that
time draw near enough to notice any signal he could offer.
Playing at self-command gave him some earnest of it. In a whim of the
better man he put off his clothes and sprang into the breakers. He had
grown chill, but a long wrestle with the surf warmed his blood, and as
he reclothed himself and with a better step took his way along the
beach toward his tent a returning zest of manhood refreshed his spirit.
The hour was up, but in a kind of equilibrium of impulses and with
much emptiness of mind, he let it lengthen on, made a fire, and for the
first time in two days cooked food. He ate and still tarried. A brand in
his camp fire, a piece from the remnant of his boat, made beautiful
flames. He idly cast in another and was pleased to find himself sitting
there instead of gazing his eyes out for sails that never rose into view.
He watched a third brand smoke and blaze. And then, as tamely as if
the new impulse were only another part of a continued abstraction, he
arose and once more climbed the sandy hills. The highest was some
distance from his camp. At one point near its top a brief northeastward
glimpse of the marsh's outer edge and the blue waters beyond showed
at least that nothing had come near enough to raise the pelicans. But the
instant his sight cleared the crown of the ridge he rushed forward, threw
up his arms, and lifted his voice in a long, imploring yell. Hardly two
miles away, her shapely canvas leaning and stiffening in the augmented
breeze, a small yacht had just gone about, and with twice the speed at
which she must have approached was, hurrying back straight into the
north.

The frantic man dashed back