t there was
nothing for it but to risk the peril. They were among the breakers
which caught and tossed them on like eggshells. The scourge of the
surf swept them; a woman, a man--even the child, were torn from them
and ground on the ghastly teeth of the coral. Five were swept over
with the craft into the still, blue lagoon, and landing they fell
prone upon the shore, just breathing and no more, after the giant
buffeting of the thundering rollers, following the long, slow
starvation of their wonderful journey in the hut on the canoes among
"the waters of the wondrous isles."

"Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims."

II

Thrown up by the ocean in the darkness like driftwood, Elikana and his
companions lay on the grey shore. Against the dim light of the stars
and beyond the beach of darkness they could see the fronds of
the palms waving. The five survivors were starving, and the green
cocoa-nuts hung above them, filled with food and drink. But their
bodies, broken and tormented as they were by hunger and the battering
breakers, refused even to rise and climb for the food that meant life.
So they lay there, as though dead.

* * * * *

Over the ridge of the beach came a man. His pale copper skin shone in
the fresh sunlight of the morning. His quick black eyes were caught by
the sight of torn clothing hanging on a bush. Moving swiftly down the
beach of pounded coral, he saw a man lying with arms thrown out, face
downward. Turning the body over Faivaatala[31] found that the man was
dead. Taking the body in his arms he staggered with it up the beach,
and placed it under the shade of the trees. Returning he found the
living five. Their gaunt bodies and the broken craft on the shore told
him without words the story of their long drifting over the wilderness
of the waters.

Without stopping to waste words in empty sympathy with starving men,
Faivaatala ran to the nearest cocoa-nut tree and, climbing it, threw
down luscious nuts. Those below quickly knocked off the tops, drank
deep draughts of the cool milk and then ate. Coming down again,
Faivaatala kindled a fire and soon had some fish grilling for these
strange wanderers thrown up on the tiny islet.

They had no time to thank him before he ran off and swiftly paddled
to Motutala, the island where he lived, to tell the story of these
st