They went down the hill toward the beach, Harrigan singing and McTee
silent, with downward head. On the beach they started for some rocks
which shelved out into the water, for it was possible that they might
find some sort of shellfish on the rocks below the surface of the
water. Before they reached the place, however, McTee stopped and
pointed out across the waves. Some object tossed slowly up and down a
short distance from the beach.
"From the wreck," said McTee. "I didn't think it would drift quite as
fast as this."
They waded out to examine; the water was not over their waists when
they reached it. They found a whole section from the side of the
wheelhouse, the timbers intact.
_On it lay Kate Malone, unconscious._
Manifestly she never could have kept on the big fragment during the
night of the storm had it not been for a piece of stout twine with
which she had tied her left wrist to a projecting bolt. She had wrapped
the cord many times, but despite this it had worn away her skin and
sunk deep in the flesh of her arm. Half her clothes were torn away as
she had been thrown about on the boards. Whether from exhaustion or the
pain of her cut wrist, she had fainted and evidently lain in this
position for several hours; one side of her face was burned pink by the
heat of the sun.
They dragged the float in, and McTee knelt beside the girl and pressed
an ear against her breast.
"Living!" he announced. "Now we're three on the rim of the world."
"Which makes a crowd," grinned Harrigan.
CHAPTER 10
They started working eagerly to revive her. While McTee bathed her face
and throat with handfuls of the sea water, Harrigan worked to liberate
her from the twine. It was not easy. The twine was wet, and the knot
held fast. Finally he gnawed it in two with his teeth. McTee, at the
same time, elicited a faint moan. Her wrist was bruised and swollen
rather than dangerously cut. Harrigan stuffed the twine into his hip
pocket; then the two Adams carried their Eve to the shade of a tree and
watched the color come back to her face by slow degrees.
The wind now increased suddenly as it had done on the evening of the
wreck. It rose even as the day darkened, and in a moment it was rushing
through the trees screaming in a constantly rising crescendo. The rain
was coming, and against that tropical squall shelter was necessary.
The two men ran down the beach and returned dragging the ponderous
section of the wheelhouse. They leaned the frame against two trunks at
the same instant that the first big drops of rain rattled against it.
Overhead they were quite securely protected by the dense and
interweaving foliage of the two trees, but still the wind whistled in
at either side and over and under the frame of boards. Of one accord
they dropped beside their patient.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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