Angel Island

Physically, Pete was the black type of Celt. The wild thatch of his

scrubbing-brush hair shone purple in the light. Scrape his face as he

would, the purple shadow of his beard seemed ingrained in his white

white skin. Black-browed and black-lashed, he had the luminous

blue-gray-green eyes of the colleen. There was a curious untamable

quality in his look that was the mixture of two mad strains, the

aloofness of the Celt and the aloofness of the genius.

Three weeks passed. The clear, warm-cool, lucid, sunny weather kept up.

The ocean flattened, gradually. Twice every twenty-four hours the tide

brought treasure; but it brought less and less every day. Occasionally

came a stiffened human reminder of their great disaster. But calloused

as they were now to these experiences, the men buried it with hasty

ceremony and forgot.

By this time an incongruous collection stretched in parallel lines above

the high-water mark. "Something, anything, everything - and then some,"

remarked Honey Smith. Wood wreckage of all descriptions, acres of

furniture, broken, split, blistered, discolored, swollen; piles of

carpets, rugs, towels, bed-linen, stained, faded, shrunken, torn; files

of swollen mattresses, pillows, cushions, life-preservers; heaps of

table-silver and kitchen-ware tarnished and rusty; mounds of china and

glass; mountains of tinned goods, barrels boxes, books, suit-cases,

leather bags; trunks and trunks and more trunks and still more trunks;

for, mainly, the trunks had saved themselves.

Part of the time, in between tides, they tried to separate the grain of

this huge collection of lumber from the chaff; part of the time they

made exploring trips into the interior. At night they sat about their

huge fire and talked.

The island proved to be about twenty miles in length by seven in width.

It was uninhabited and there were no large animals on it. It was Frank

Merrill's theory that it was the exposed peak of a huge extinct volcano.

In the center, filling the crater, was a little fresh-water lake. The

island was heavily wooded; but in contour it presented only diminutive

contrasts of hill and valley. And except as the semi-tropical foliage

offered novelties of leaf and flower, the beauties of unfamiliar shapes

and colors, it did not seem particularly interesting. Ralph Addington

was the guide of these expeditions. From this tree, he pointed out, the

South Sea Islander manufactured the tappa cloth, from that the

poeepooee, from yonder the arva. Honey Smith used to say that the only

depressing thing about these trips was the utter silence of the gorgeous

birds which they saw on every side. On the other hand, they extracted

what comfort they could from Merrill's and Addington's assurance that,

should the ship's supply give out, they could live comfortably enough on

birds' eggs, fruit, and fish.