Angel Island

Up and down the beach stretched an unbroken line of wreckage. Here and

there, things, humanly shaped, lay prone or supine or twisted into crazy

attitudes. Some had been flung far up the slope beyond the water-line.

Others, rolling back in the torrent of the tide, engaged in a ceaseless,

grotesque frolic with the foamy waters. Out of a mass of wood caught

between rocks and rising shoulder-high above it, a woman's head, livid,

rigid, stared with a fixed gaze out of her dead eyes straight at their

group. Her blonde hair had already dried; it hung in stiff, salt-clogged

masses that beat wildly about her face. Beyond something rocking between

two wedged sea-chests, but concealed by them, constantly kicked a sodden

foot into the air. Straight ahead, the naked body of a child flashed to

the crest of each wave.

All this destruction ran from north to south between two reefs of black

rock. It edged a broad bow-shaped expanse of sand, snowy, powdery,

hummocky, netted with wefts of black seaweed that had dried to a

rattling stiffness. To the east, this silvery crescent merged finally

with a furry band of vegetation which screened the whole foreground of

the island.

The day was perfect and the scene beautiful. They had watched the sun

come up over the trees at their back. And it was as if they had seen a

sunrise for the first time in their life. To them, it was neither

beautiful nor familiar; it was sinister and strange. A chill, that was

not of the dawn but of death itself, lay over everything. The morning

wind was the breath of the tomb, the smells that came to them from the

island bore the taint of mortality, the very sunshine seemed icy. They

suffered - the five survivors of the night's tragedy - with a scarifying

sense of disillusion with Nature. It was as though a beautiful, tender,

and fondly loved mother had turned murderously on her children, had

wounded them nearly to death, had then tried to woo them to her breast

again. The loveliness of her, the mindless, heartless, soulless

loveliness, as of a maniac tamed, mocked at their agonies, mocked with

her gentle indifference, mocked with her self-satisfied placidity,

mocked with her serenity and her peace. For them she was dead - dead

like those whom we no longer trust.

The sun was racing up a sky smooth and clear as gray glass. It dropped

on the torn green sea a shimmer that was almost dazzling; but ere was

something incongruous about that - as though Nature had covered her

victim with a spangled scarf. It brought out millions of sparkles in the

white sand; and there seemed something calculating about that - as

though she were bribing them with jewels to forget.