The Castaways Clayton dreamed that he was drinking his fill of water, pure, delightful drafts of fresh water.With a start he gained consciousness to find himself wet through by torrents of rain that were falling upon his body and his upturned face.A heavy tropical shower was beating down upon them.He opened his mouth and drank.Presently he was so revived and strengthened that he was enabled to raise himself upon his hands.Across his legs lay Monsieur Thuran.A few feet aft Jane Porter was huddled in a pitiful little heap in the bottom of the boat--she was quite still.Clayton knew that she was dead.
After infinite labor he released himself from Thuran's pinioning body, and with renewed strength crawled toward the girl.
He raised her head from the rough boards of the boat's bottom.
There might be life in that poor, starved frame even yet.
He could not quite abandon all hope, and so he seized a water-soaked rag and squeezed the precious drops between the swollen lips of the hideous thing that had but a few short days before glowed with the resplendent life of happy youth and glorious beauty.
For some time there was no sign of returning animation, but at last his efforts were rewarded by a slight tremor of the half-closed lids.He chafed the thin hands, and forced a few more drops of water into the parched throat.The girl opened her eyes, looking up at him for a long time before she could recall her surroundings.
"Water?" she whispered."Are we saved?"
"It is raining," he explained."We may at least drink.
Already it has revived us both."
"Monsieur Thuran?" she asked."He did not kill you.Is he dead?""I do not know," replied Clayton."If he lives and this rain revives him--" But he stopped there, remembering too late that he must not add further to the horrors which the girl already had endured.
But she guessed what he would have said.
"Where is he?" she asked.
Clayton nodded his head toward the prostrate form of the Russian.For a time neither spoke.
"I will see if I can revive him," said Clayton at length.
"No," she whispered, extending a detaining hand toward him.
"Do not do that--he will kill you when the water has given him strength.If he is dying, let him die.Do not leave me alone in this boat with that beast."Clayton hesitated.His honor demanded that he attempt to revive Thuran, and there was the possibility, too, that the Russian was beyond human aid.It was not dishonorable to hope so.As he sat fighting out his battle he presently raised his eyes from the body of the man, and as they passed above the gunwale of the boat he staggered weakly to his feet with a little cry of joy.
"Land, Jane!" he almost shouted through his cracked lips.
"Thank God, land!"
The girl looked, too, and there, not a hundred yards away, she saw a yellow beach, and, beyond, the luxurious foliage of a tropical jungle.
"Now you may revive him," said Jane Porter, for she, too, had been haunted with the pangs of conscience which had resulted from her decision to prevent Clayton from offering succor to their companion.
It required the better part of half an hour before the Russian evinced sufficient symptoms of returning consciousness to open his eyes, and it was some time later before they could bring him to a realization of their good fortune.
By this time the boat was scraping gently upon the sandy bottom.
Between the refreshing water that he had drunk and the stimulus of renewed hope, Clayton found strength to stagger through the shallow water to the shore with a line made fast to the boat's bow.This he fastened to a small tree which grew at the top of a low bank, for the tide was at flood, and he feared that the boat might carry them all out to sea again with the ebb, since it was quite likely that it would be beyond his strength to get Jane Porter to the shore for several hours.
Next he managed to stagger and crawl toward the near-by jungle, where he had seen evidences of profusion of tropical fruit.His former experience in the jungle of Tarzan of the Apes had taught him which of the many growing things were edible, and after nearly an hour of absence he returned to the beach with a little armful of food.
The rain had ceased, and the hot sun was beating down so mercilessly upon her that Jane Porter insisted on making an immediate attempt to gain the land.Still further invigorated by the food Clayton had brought, the three were able to reach the half shade of the small tree to which their boat was moored.
Here, thoroughly exhausted, they threw themselves down to rest, sleeping until dark.
For a month they lived upon the beach in comparative safety.
As their strength returned the two men constructed a rude shelter in the branches of a tree, high enough from the ground to insure safety from the larger beasts of prey.
By day they gathered fruits and trapped small rodents; at night they lay cowering within their frail shelter while savage denizens of the jungle made hideous the hours of darkness.
They slept upon litters of jungle grasses, and for covering at night Jane Porter had only an old ulster that belonged to Clayton, the same garment that he had worn upon that memorable trip to the Wisconsin woods.Clayton had erected a frail partition of boughs to divide their arboreal shelter into two rooms--one for the girl and the other for Monsieur Thuran and himself.
From the first the Russian had exhibited every trait of his true character--selfishness, boorishness, arrogance, cowardice, and lust.Twice had he and Clayton come to blows because of Thuran's attitude toward the girl.
Clayton dared not leave her alone with him for an instant.
The existence of the Englishman and his fiancee was one continual nightmare of horror, and yet they lived on in hope of ultimate rescue.
