m the
platform a hollow reed with a sharp end and, stretching himself at full
length in his accustomed place at the stern, he thrust the reed down
into one of the bladders underneath and drank his fill of sweet
water....

He had a dozen such storage bladders remaining, built into the floats at
intervals above the water line--quite enough to last him safely home
again.

[Illustration:

_A Rex Ingram--Metro Picture._

_Where the Pavement Ends._

A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]

THE LOST GOD

Prophets have cried out in print, no man regarding, and saints have been
known to write their autobiographies, and even angels are credited now
and then with revealing most curious matters in language quite plain and
ungrammatical. But I have seen the diary of an authentic god who once
went to and fro on the earth and in the waters underneath.

His record is the Book of Jim Albro, and he made it at Barange Bay,
which is Papua, which is the end of the back of beyond and a bit farther
yet; the great, dark, and smiling land that no white man has ever yet
gripped as a conqueror, where anything can happen that you would care to
believe and many things that you never would. He neglected to copyright
it himself. The chances of his returning to claim it are apparently
remote. And Jeckol says that fiction is stranger than truth anyhow, and
pays better. So I shall feel quite safe in making free of that
remarkable work, just as Jim Albro set it down with a leaden bullet on
some strips of bark and left it for those who came after to find....

In his very blackest hour Jim Albro must have known that somebody would
come after him, some time. Somebody always did come after him, no matter
how far and to what desperate chance his trail might lead. He was that
kind. All his days he never lacked the friend to hunt him up and to pack
him home when he was helpless, to pay his bills or to bail him out at
need. One of those irresistible rascals born to a soft place near the
world's heart, whose worst follies serve only to endear them, whose
wildest errors are accepted as the manifestation of an engaging caprice,
while they go on serenely drawing blank checks against destiny!

It is odd that he should have had to settle up in the end unaided, cut
off from all help, completely isolated--and yet with the savor of
popular admiration still rising about him, amid the continued applause
of a multitude....

"A chap like Albro can't simply drop o