Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 2 (1925-02).djvu/121

 himself, treading water, to make sure of his direction. He located the spar, straight in line with his course. To his surprize it seemed no nearer than when he had stood on the beach. This he attributed to the queer tricks of refraction, and resumed his swim.

After another long, steady period of progress in the same direction he repeated his lookout. Again he reassured himself as to his course. Once more he swam on, puzzled that the spar still seemed so distant. It was almost uncanny.

Suddenly, as this calamity usually comes, even to an expert swimmer, he began to tire. He rested, floating, for several minutes, and then, treading water, again oriented himself by the spar. He could perceive no difference in its appearance of nearness. For all the progress he had made he might as well have been standing on the beach! Then it came to him suddenly that his disintegration must have been making strides far more rapidly than he had imagined possible. He must have got only a little way from the island! How good it was—what a mercy!—that it had this form, and not some other that would have been apparent to Marian.

Wearily he trod water again, and, locating the spar, turned himself directly around in the certainty of finding the island just at hand, his one hope being that he had got far enough away so that he might drown quietly here out of Marian's view. He hoped she might not have remained on the beach. If so she would be puzzled at his slight progress, and would be watching him intently He could never reach the spar. He could not, of course, go back. The solution rested upon his not returning, unless (how absurd it seemed!) he should, by that saving chance which by its casuistry saved his act from deliberate self-destruction, manage in some way to drive off the sharks, and, by a lucky dive, succeed in lighting upon one of his cartons

He could not see the island! He shaded his eyes with his hands, and looked carefully. Could that be it? It must be. There was no other island within hundreds of miles. But—could he possibly have come so far? The island appeared to him almost low on the horizon. He must have been swimming steadily for hours. He could see the island in its entirety; perspective had made it small and compact. And he had dreaded Marian's being on the beach to see!

Infinitely troubled, all his reasoning thrown askew, he rolled over upon his back and floated, trying to think consecutively. There was only one explanation for the apparently stationary spar. That must be the very common sea-mirage. That was what the islander had meant: what he could not explain! He, too, had seen the spar, had had it pointed out to him; and he had said it was almost too far for a company of men in the outriggers! How could he, in his decadent condition, have come such a distance as this toward it?

Then he recalled that he had been basing this present idea of decadence, of having covered only a short distance, on the fact that the spar had not appeared to grow in size. But that, as he had just rightly reasoned, was mirage! Reason allowed only one answer to the riddle. He had actually covered the great distance the time spent in the water would have permitted him to swim while in perfect condition.

He thought of his intended battle with the sharks. He shuddered, and imagined a shark just behind him, then laughed aloud at this fancy. Suddenly he sobered. He had laughed—laughed! A fitting conclusion to a perfectly normal sequence of ideas. He reasoned with himself afresh. What was the matter with him? This manner of thought, this great swim—