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As they were now but knee-deep in the water, and the night was still misty and dark, these objects could be at no great distance and deep water need no longer be dreaded. The three castaways considered themselves as having reached the shore. Harry and Terence were about to continue on to the beach, when Colin called to them to come to a stop. "Why?" inquired Harry. "What for?" asked Terence.
The planks were hard, no doubt, but our castaways were hardy; besides, a few folds of the superfluous portions of the large sail helped to soften the planks here and there.
One by one the castaways would perish, and when the last of them was gone, the U-boat would steal away. "Dead bait's no good," explained the seaman.
So we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wild-growing moon jungle, crawled in terror before the sounds that had come upon us. We crawled, as it seemed, a long time before we saw either Selenite or mooncalf, though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous noises of these latter continually drawing nearer to us.
He told me that he was engaged upon a Memorial to the Evangelical Union, which should state the number of unconverted men in the ranks, and the number of castaways. He accredited the loss of the campaign to the prevailing wickedness, but was unwilling to admit that the Southern troops were more religious.
But it revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvellously clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that direction a final malediction.
What was the essential difference between that woman and herself? He had wanted them both, he had taken them both for his pleasure, heedless of the pain he might cause to others and to them. For her, perhaps, the higher organism, had been reserved the higher torture. She did not know. The vision of the girl in the outer darkness reserved for castaways was terrible.
The flag-ship, which they had left stranded, lay broken in half by the terrific force of the sea, and the after-part of her was now being gradually driven shoreward, the fore-part remaining, as before, embedded in the sand; and, worse still for the poor castaways, the remaining three ships of the fleet had cut their cables and, setting what sail they dared, were heading away from the island before the gale.
It is hard to picture through the imagination the awful strain that day and night rested upon the minds of these hapless castaways. Never could they drop off to sleep except in dread that during the night the ice on which they slept, might split, even under their very pallets, and they be awakened by the deathly plunge into the icy water.
But the petition "Forgive us our trespasses," falling in so apposite after they had themselves forgiven the immediate author of their miseries, sounded like an absolution. Tea was taken on deck in the time of the sunset, and not long after the five castaways castaways once more lay down to sleep. Day dawned windless and hot.
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