On the silver shoal the waves washed and washed, breaking like crushed
opals where the sands sang with the humming froth.
Troops of little shore birds, wading on the shoal, tossed their
sun-tipped wings and scuttled inland, where, dappled with shadow from
the fringing forest, the white beach of the island stretched.
The water all around was shallow, limpid as crystal, and he saw the
ribbed sand shining on the bottom, where purple seaweed floated, and
delicate sea creatures darted and swarmed and scattered again at the
dip of his paddle.
Like velvet rubbed on velvet the canoe brushed across the sand. He
staggered to his feet, stumbled out, dragged the canoe high up under
the trees, turned it bottom upward, and sank beside it, face downward
in the sand. Sleep came to drive away the fear of fear, but hunger,
thirst, and fever fought with sleep, and he dreamed--dreamed of a
rope that sawed his neck, of the fight in the woods, and the shots. He
dreamed, too, of the camp, of his forty pounds of spruce gum, of Tully,
and of Bates. He dreamed of the fire and the smoke-scorched kettle, of
the foul odour of musty bedding, of the greasy cards, and of his own
new pack, hoarded for weeks to please the others. All this he dreamed,
lying there face downward in the sand; but he did not dream of the face
of the dead.
The shadows of the leaves moved on his blonde head, crisp with clipped
curls. A butterfly flitted around him, alighting now on his legs,
now on the back of his bronzed hands. All the afternoon the bees hung
droning among the wildwood blossoms; the leaves above scarcely rustled;
the shore birds brooded along the water's edge; the thin tide, sleeping
on the sand, mirrored the sky.
Twilight paled the zenith; a breeze moved in the deeper woods; a star
glimmered, went out, glimmered again, faded, and glimmered.
Night came. A moth darted to and fro under the trees; a beetle hummed
around a heap of seaweed and fell scrambling in the sand. Somewhere
among the trees a sound had become distinct, the song of a little
brook, melodious, interminable. He heard it in his dream; it threaded
all his dreams like a needle of silver, and like a needle it pricked
him--pricked his dry throat and cracked lips. It could not awake him;
the cool night swathed him head and foot.
Toward dawn a bird woke up and piped. Other birds stirred, restless,
half awakened; a gull spread a cramped wing on the shore, preened its
feathers, scratched its tufted neck, and took two drowsy steps toward
the sea.
The sea breeze stirred out behind the mist bank; it raised the feathers
on the sleeping gulls; it set the leaves whispering. A twig snapped,
broke off, and fell. Kent stirred, sighed, trembled, and awoke.
The first thing he heard was the song of the brook, and he stumbled
straight into the woods. There it lay, a thin, deep stream in the gray
morning light, and he stretched himself beside it and laid his cheek
in it. A bird drank in the pool, too--a little fluffy bird, bright-eyed
and fearless.
His knees were firmer when at last he rose, heedless of the drops that
beaded lips and chin. With his knife he dug and scraped at some white
roots that hung half meshed in the bank of the brook, and when he had
cleaned them in the pool he ate them.
The sun stained the sky when he went down to the canoe, but the eternal
curtain of fog, far out at sea, hid it as yet from sight.
He lifted the canoe, bottom upwards, to his head, and, paddle and pole
in either hand, carried it into the forest.
After he had set it down he stood a moment, opening and shutting his
knife. Then he looked up into the trees. There were birds there, if
he could get at them. He looked at the brook. There were the prints of
his fingers in the sand; there, too, was the print of something else--a
deer's pointed hoof.
He had nothing but his knife. He opened it again and looked at it.
That day he dug for clams and ate them raw. He waded out into the
shallows, too, and jabbed at fish with his setting pole, but hit
nothing except a yellow crab.
Fire was what he wanted. He hacked and chipped at flinty-looking
pebbles, and scraped tinder from a stick of sun-dried driftwood. His
knuckles bled, but no fire came.
That night he heard deer in the woods, and could not sleep for
thinking, until the dawn came up behind the wall of mist, and he rose
with it to drink his fill at the brook and tear raw clams with his
white teeth. Again he fought for fire, craving it as he had never
craved water, but his knuckles bled, and the knife scraped on the flint
in vain.
His mind, perhaps, had suffered somewhat. The white beach seemed to
rise and fall like a white carpet on a gusty hearth. The birds, too,
that ran along the sand, seemed big and juicy, like partridges; and
he chased them, hurling shells and bits of driftwood at them till he
could scarcely keep his feet for the rising, plunging beach--or carpet,
whichever it was. That night the deer aroused him at intervals. He
heard them splashing and grunting and crackling along the brook. Once
he arose and stole after them, knife in hand, till a false step into
the brook awoke him to his folly, and he felt his way back to the
canoe, trembling.
Morning came, and again he drank at the brook, lying on the sand where
countless heart-shaped hoofs had passed leaving clean imprints; and
again he ripped the raw clams from their shells and swallowed them,
whimpering.
All day long the white beach rose and fell and heaved and flattened
under his bright dry eyes. He chased the shore birds at times, till the
unsteady beach tripped him up and he fell full length in the sand. Then
he would rise moaning, and creep into the shadow of the wood, and watch
the little song-birds in the branches, moaning, always moaning.
His hands, sticky with blood, hacked steel and flint together, but so
feebly that now even the cold sparks no longer came.
He began to fear the advancing night; he dreaded to hear the big warm
deer among the thickets. Fear clutched him suddenly, and he lowered his
head and set his teeth and shook fear from his throat again.
Then he started aimlessly into the woods, crowding past bushes,
scraping trees, treading on moss and twig and mouldy stump, his bruised
hands swinging, always swinging.
The sun set in the mist as he came out of the woods on to another
beach--a warm, soft beach, crimsoned by the glow in the evening clouds.
And on the sand at his feet lay a young girl asleep, swathed in the
silken garment of her own black hair, round limbed, brown, smooth as
the bloom on the tawny beach.
A gull flapped overhead, screaming. Her eyes, deeper than night,
unclosed. Then her lips parted in a cry, soft with sleep, "Ihó!"