All day long, beginning with the dawn, he paced the shores of a little land-locked bay, never taking his eyes from its glassy surface save to search among the wreckage that littered the beach. All day he came and went. All day,—searching,—always searching. Day gave place to night, and the day was born again, and still he passed back and forth scanning the bay with intent glance that sought no relief from the hot reflection of sky and water. Finally thirst drove him inland to where the starved stream, that gave the greater part of its moisture to the dry and hungry earth, was untainted by the ocean's salt. Across the hot sands each day at evening he made his lonely pilgrimage for the means whereby he might sustain life. When the waters of the bay were quiet and untroubled, huge bubbles could be seen to rise and break, bursting when the air was reached. Whenever this happened, the watcher would mark the spot with his eye and swim out, diving repeatedly as though seeking for something that lay in the slime at the bottom. But on each occasion he came back empty-handed. Still he waited, making no effort to leave the desolation of which he had become a part. Many days passed in this manner. One evening when he had gone to the stream, a black and bloated object rose with a single bubble on the bay. And then one by one up came the dead, until a hundred floated on the slack of the tide, or moved lightly, influenced by the imperceptible current. They were the bodies of men and women, with streaming knotted hair to which the seaweed clung. As the tide came in, they drifted to and fro,—ever faster with its increasing flow. Each seemed to hurry in itself,—a silly parody on life and haste. Lashed by the wind, the surf disturbed the smoothness of their resting place. Then a strange thing happened. As the bodies followed back and forth, they smote one against the other, darting from spot to spot, bobbing up and down, or rolling from side to side. At one point when the tide boiled over a sunken ledge of rocks, they had a wild fashion of making the pass so close together that the hindmost would strike those before them with such force in the swiftening current that they would leap their length from the water, or come erect, standing knee-deep in the waves with much waving of stiffened arms. It was the dead at play. The wind and the waves were going down, sinking with the sun. Still the bodies kept up the chase in the swirling rush of the waters. The moon came up. The tide reached its fulness and stood spreading out on the beach, and the dead were at rest.