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ship, he plummeted to his finish. The others, Selinger and Java John, Markey
and the girl Gloriam and theLily's crew fled this way and that, screaming or
cursing or sobbing out their terrors.
And what of Mr. Witherby?That unhappy soul, when the typhoon arrived at
Fortune, was seated with LeClair's monkey on a sheltered bit of beach some
distance from the camp, pondering, as might be expected, man's inhumanity to
man. The storm upon him, he merely clutched the monkey closer and sat where he
was--until the sea discovered his retreat and hissed in to drive him out.
He went then along the shore, grimly battling the wind for possession of the
whimpering ball of hair that clung to him for protection.He was frightened,
but where could a man go in such a place? Not up, or the howling wind-demons
would flay the flesh from his bones. Not into the rockitself, or the sea would
follow and drown him. So, then, the problem was simplified. If he found a
sheltered spot, he would duck into it. If not, he would keep on walking.
HE CAME presently to the remains of Morton, flattened at the base of the
cliff, and transferred from the dead man's pocket to his own a half-eaten
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square of chocolate. And then he discovered LeClair, on the beach where the
waves had tossed him, and acquired some cigarettes and a revolver--both wet
but potentially usable. And then Witherby saw the boat.
Precisely what little Mr. Witherby hoped to do in such a storm with a small
boat and a pair of oars is not known. Perhaps he thought to row himself and
his monkey out to theLily and cut her loose, on the chance of finding a way
out of his servitude. He knew theLily was unmanned, and at that time he was
unaware she had been swept away. At any rate, he saw the boat and ran to it;
he tucked the monkey into it, and, with strength he had not known he
possessed, he contrived to launch the craft, during a sudden lull in the
storm's fury.
She was a cork, that boat. She defied the mountainous waves to upset her.
With Witherby tugging at the oars, she bore her two forlorn passengers, man
and monkey, inch by straining inch past the foaming rocks at the island's tip
and into the clear.
But then the storm returned with renewed vigor, and Witherby perceived the
futility of his efforts. He stopped rowing. With the monkey in his arms he
huddled in the bottom of the boat and let the typhoon take him. Drowning,
after all, was more pleasant to contemplate than a return to his previous
status of slave.
Drowning, however, was not to be his lot. The green waves bowled him along
through the remainder of that devilish day, into the nightmare night that
followed. His boat climbed their swollen sides with the tenacity of a
crag-rat, plummeted from their crests with the grace of a plunging gull.
THEN the night was over, and the storm with it, and Witherby looked out on a
watery world colored red by a friendly sun. "Little One," he said in
wonderment, "look at us. We're alive!" Little One's reply was an ecstatic
squeal.
But Witherby was too wise in the ways of Fate to be long fooled.
"Alive," he amended, "but for how long? Who's to lead us out of here?" There
they were, in a boat on an empty ocean. The wind had passed. The sea was
calming after its orgiastic excesses. But the calm was more frightening than
the tumult.
During the awful hours of storm there had been hope of ultimate salvation
behind the terrors of each passing moment. The boat, after all, was being
blown somewhere and might in the end fetch up against land. Now peace had
fallen from heaven, but in peace lay peril. For Mr. Witherby and Little One
had only half a bar of chocolate to see them through the torments of hunger.
Of water they had none at all. They would perish unless they reached land in a
day or two.
Wherewas land? Witherby had not the faintest notion. How far they had been
blown fromFortuneIsland , or in what direction, he knew not. The climbing sun
told him where east lay--but he had no way of knowing what lay eastward. The
world about him was all water, metal-bright, blinding, and boundless. And as
the hours passed, the sun grew hot.
Witherby took up the oars and began to row. Presently he gave up. What was
the use of rowing?
"Little One," he said flatly, "we're done for, I'm afraid. There's not a
thing we can do but sit and wait."
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And so began for Weldon Witherby the last and most wretched lap of the
downhill journey which had begun for him inRangoon .FortuneIsland had not,
after all, been the bottom rung of the ladder. Fate had tucked another one
under him, giving him, you might say,the full treatment.
He was to be broiled alive. His departure from earth was to be no mere plunge
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