I turned about reluctantly, to retrace my steps while the dim light yet
lingered. Some unseen angel of mercy it must have been that bade me
pause, and led me gently down the steep bank to the waters edge, where
the sharp spray lashed my cheeks. If this be not the cause, then I
know not why I went; or why, once being there, I should have turned to
the right, and rounded the edge of the little bay. Yet all of this I
did; and God knows that many a time since I have thanked Him for it
upon my knees.

I saw first the thing bobbing up and down behind a bare wave-washed
rock that lifted a hoary crown close beside the water's edge. A branch
from off some tree, I thought, until I had taken a half-dozen curious
steps nearer, and felt my heart bound as I knew it to be a boat. My
first thought, of course, was of hostile Indians; and I swept the
sand-hills anxiously for any other sign of human presence. The world
about me was soundless except for the ceaseless roaring of the waves,
and there was not even a leaf within my sight to flutter. I crept
forward cautiously, seeing no footprints on the smooth sand, until my
searching eyes rested upon a white hand, dangling, as if lifeless, over
the boat's gunwale. Forgetting everything else in the excitement of
this discovery, I sprang hastily forward and peered within the boat.

It was an awkward and rudely-formed water-craft, with neither mast nor
oars, yet of fair size, broad-beamed and seaworthy. In the forward
part lay the body of a woman; curled up and resting upon the boat's
bottom, the head buried upon the broad seat so that no face was
visible, with one hand hidden beneath, the other outstretched above the
rail. So huddled was her posture that I could distinguish few details
in the fading light; yet I noted that she wore a white upper garment,
and that her thick hair flowed in a dense black mass about her