Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/330

298 I was at once identified, though still unconscious, and my name listed first among the very few survivors, so that you were spared the anxiety of waiting for news of me. Only four of us left out of that whole shipload! I had final proof this morning of poor Lawler's death by the finding of his body.

"I was hardly out of bed when a mangy little man—a German trader—came to tell me that more bodies had been found, and, as I have been called upon in every instance to aid in identification, I set out with him down the beach at once. It was almost impossible to realize that this blue and silver ocean glimmering under the blazing sun was the same white-frothing terror that had swallowed up all my companions of three days before. The greater part of the bodies found that morning had been already carried up the beach. Among those remaining on the sand the first we came upon was that of Lawler. It lay upon its side at the entrance of a ragged sandy cove, half buried in the sand, which here was white as leprosy. His ears, the sockets of his eyes, and every interstice of his clothing were filled with this white and leprous sand by the washing of the waves; his pockets bulged and were distended with it."

"What! What!" Trant clutched the letter from the desk in excitement and stared at it with eyes flashing with interest.

"It is a horrible picture, Mr. Trant," the girl shuddered.

"Horrible—yes, certainly," the psychologist assented tensely; "but I was not thinking of the horror," he checked himself.

"Of what, then?" asked Caryl pointedly.

But the psychologist had already returned to the letter in his hand, the remainder of which he read with intent and ever-increasing interest: