Joan and Aderhold ate and drank. The will to live was strong, for life had turned a rainbow, and a wild and beautiful forest, and a song of the high and the deep, and an intense pulsation. The two came swiftly up from Death’s threshold. Before the boat came into sight of land the light was back in their sunken eyes and some strength in their frame.... The land seemed a low, island shore. The excited Indians gesticulated, spoke in their own tongue. Aderhold, questioning them, learned that it was the outermost of their island group, but not their own island to which they were bound. They saw pale sand and verdure green as emerald; then the night came and covered all from sight. No light of torch or of cooking-fire pierced the darkness. The blank shores slipped past, the boat left them astern, and now again all around was the sea.... But though it was night there was no sleeping. The returning exiles were excited, restless, garrulous. The two learned that there were many islands and now almost no people. The people—the Indians beat their breasts—were gone now, almost all gone. For the masters sent men from the great islands to burn the villages and take the men and women and children and drive them aboard ships and carry them off to make poor slaves of them. They had done so when the oldest men were children, and when the oldest men’s fathers were children. But now the masters did not come, for the men and women and children were all gone—all gone but a few, a few. The returned from long slavery did not know if these few were yet there, yet clinging to their island. Night passed, dawn came, the wind blew them on. Now they saw islets and islands, but no craft upon the water, or sign of life. Then, in the afternoon, the Indians’ lode-star lifted upon the horizon. They put their helm for it, a freshening wind filled their sail. Presently they saw it clear, a low island, here ivory white and here green as emerald. The Indians shouted and wept. They caressed one another in their own tongue, they gesticulated, they held out their arms to the nearing shore.