"We slept for three mortal hours. I've no doubt we should have slept oblivious for another three, had not the making tide aroused me with its cool wash around my ankles. The sun, too, was stealing our resting-place from us, or the comfort of it, cutting away the cliff's shadow as it neared the meridian. . . . The boat, utterly neglected by us, had floated up, broadside on, with the quiet tide, almost to our feet. The dog sat on his haunches, waiting and watching for one or other of us to give sign of life. "I roused up Farrell. . . . My first thought was for Santa's body, laid within the boat on the bottom-boards. 'Are we man enough, between us, to lift her out?' I asked. 'Or shall we moor the boat and climb for help? . . . There are certainly people on this island, since this dog must have a master somewhere.' "'She is a light weight,' said Farrell simply. 'Let us try. . . . Her soul forgive me for leaving her, even so long as I have, in that horrible boat!' "So, weak as we were, we managed to lift Santa's body ashore and carry it up the few yards of sand beyond what we judged to be a faint tide-mark, close under the ferns. . . . After this we fetched ashore the tool-chest and some loose articles that we judged to be necessary--such as the cooking-pot, binoculars, and a spare coil or two of rope and a ship's mallet; and Farrell searched the undercliff for sea-birds' eggs, whilst I gave the boat a cleansing with baler and sponge, redded her up after a fashion, and finally moored her off with a shore-line, some twenty yards out on the placid water. While thus occupied, my mind was wondering what kind of people inhabited this island, and why they kept such poor watch. . . . We had run in openly in daylight, and yet it would seem that only this dog had spied us. "If they were savages, why, then, I had only my revolver with a fair number of cartridges. . . . Some of my stock I had blazed away during the last two days in vain attempts upon the life of the sea-birds that ever wheeled out of fair range. The tool-chest, indeed, contained a shot-gun, or the parts of one: but I had never pieced them together, for the simple reason that all the cartridges belonging to it had, through Grimalson's careless stowage, been soaked and spoilt during the night of the gale. . . . Somehow, I could not mentally connect savages with the ownership of this dog. But the day wore on, and still no one hailed us from the cliffs or the green slope.