Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/280

270 and eggs, with kerosene-tin of water, he stowed in the hollow trunk of his out-rigged craft.

For days the lone man sailed over placid waters, out of sight of land. At night he directed his course by the stars, trusting to good fortune to do the same for him by day.

On an evil morn he awoke to find that his tin had sprung a leak, and given out its last drop of water. Days passed, when the sun beat down upon him, still sailing on, he knew not where; nights, when deadly dews descended upon his aching limbs and fevered head. At times he raised himself from the coffin-cabin in which he lay, and, in a moment of returning consciousness, wondered when it would end, how long he would be sailing over placid seas to some impossible "nowhere."

Now he was in his coffin, wild birds his mourners, stars his funeral tapers, dews of night his shroud. It is daylight, a steaming white craft is bearing down upon him. The blue flag he recognizes, of the "Royal Thames Yacht-club," of which years ago he was a member. He is dreaming, surely. Youthful days are returning to him. White jackets, however, and friendly bronzed faces are bending over the bulwarks of "the white ship." Bare, brown arms are lifting him out of his floating coffin!

"Ah, ah!" he laughs, "that is not kind, to disturb a man in his grave."

Kindly they laid the fevered, emaciated form on good Captain Bongard's own bunk.

The Southern Cross, returning from a six months' cruise amongst the palm-clad isles of the coral sea, drew next day in sight of the tapering pines of Norfolk Island. Wives and children and black scholars, two hundred strong, all clad in white, descended to the quay, waving and shouting and weeping for joy, to welcome the bronzed