The shore dilated. Reefs appeared to be warily avoided, and the water grew unearthly blue and clear. Green plumes of palm seemed to wave and beckon. Back from the narrow ivory beach, inland out of a break in the belt of green, rose a feather of smoke. The Indians when they saw it were as mad people. They leaped to their feet, they embraced one another, they laughed, they strained their bodies toward the land, and broke into a savage chant of home-coming.... Now they were in a tortuous channel between _cays_ and the island. The island beach widened, and now human forms appeared—not many, and at first with a hesitant and fearful air; then, as they became assured that here was only one small sailboat, with a bolder advance, until at last they came down to the edge of the small bight to which the boat was heading. They were Indians like those in the boat, a mild and placable strain, dulled and weakened by the century-old huge wrong done them. They were but a handful. In the whole island there was now but one small village. The boat glided past a fanged reef and came into a tiny crystal anchorage where the bright fish played below like coloured birds in the air. They lowered sail; they came as close as might be to the shelving land; the Indians leaped into the water and made ashore with loud cries and incoherent words. The islanders swept about them, surrounded them; there rose a wild, emotional questioning and greeting, laughing and crying. The infection spread to Joan and Aderhold. Behind them lay pain and horror, and pain and horror might again claim them. But now Time had spread for them a mighty reaction. It was so blessed to be alive!—they were so prepared to embrace and love life—every material thing seemed so transfused and brightly lit from within—they laughed themselves and felt in their eyes the happy dew.... They, too, must take to the water to come ashore. It was naught to them, the shallow bright flood. They crossed it as had done the Indians, and stepped upon the land. CHAPTER XXVII THE ISLAND A FEW miles in length, fewer in breadth, the island lay in a sub-tropic clime. During its winter all the air was neither cold nor hot, but of a happy in-between and suave perfection. Its summer brought strong heat and at times wild tempests of rain and wind, thunder and lightning. For the most part the land rose but a little way above the sea, a shallow soil with a coral base. Out of this mould sprang a forest of eternal greenness. Once there had been a number of villages, each in its small clearing, but one by one they had been destroyed and the clearings had gone back to the forest.