flame. Never had sea or sky or earth seemed more lovely,
more lusciously, voluptuously lovely. The sparkle of the salt wind
tingled through their bodies like an electric current. The warmth in the
air lapped them like a hot bath. Joy-in-life flared up in them to such a
height that it kept them running and leaping meaninglessly. They shouted
wild phrases to each other. They burst into song. At times they yelled
scraps of verse.

"We'll come across something to eat soon," said Frank Merrill, breathing
hard. "Then we'll be all right."

"I feel--better--for that run--already," panted Billy Fairfax. "Haven't
seen a black spot for five minutes."

Nobody paid any attention to him, and in a few minutes he was paying no
attention to himself. Their expedition was offering too many shocks of
horror and pathos. Fortunately the change in their mood held. It was,
indeed, as unnatural as their torpor, and must inevitably bring its
own reaction. But after each of these tragic encounters, they recovered
buoyancy, recovered it with a resiliency that had something almost
light-headed about it.

"We won't touch any of them now," Frank Merrill ordered peremptorily.
"We can attend to them later. They'll keep coming back. What we've got
to do is to think of the future. Get everything out of the water that
looks useful--immediately useful," he corrected himself. "Don't bother
about anything above high-water mark--that's there to stay. And work
like hell every one of you!"

Work they did for three hours, worked with a kind of frenzied delight
in action and pricked on by a ravenous hunger. In and out of the
combers they dashed, playing a desperate game of chance with Death.
Helter-skelter, hit-or-miss, in a blind orgy of rescue, at first they
pulled out everything they could reach. Repeatedly, Frank Merrill
stopped to lecture them on the foolish risks they were taking, on the
stupidity of such a waste of energy. "Save what we need!" he iterated
and reiterated, bellowing to make himself heard. "What we can use
now--canned stuff, tools, clothes! This lumber'll come back on the next
tide."

He seemed to keep a supervising eye on all of them; for his voice,
shouting individual orders, boomed constantly over the crash of the
waves. Realizing finally that he was the man of the hour, the others
ended by following his instructions blindly.

Merrill, himself, was no shirk. His strength seemed prodigious. When any
of the others attempted to land