ped long enough to build a huge signal fire
on the each. When they turned in, not one of them but nursed torn and
blistered hands. Not one of them but fell asleep the instant he lay
down.

They slept until long after sunrise.

It was Pete Murphy who waked them. "Say, who was it, yesterday, talked
about seeing black spots? I'm hanged if I'm not hipped, too. When I woke
just before sunrise, there were black things off there in the west. Of
course I was almost dead to the world but--"

"Like great birds?" Billy Fairfax asked with interest.

"Exactly."

"Bats from your belfry," commented Ralph Addington. Because of his
constant globe-trotting, Addington's slang was often a half-decade
behind the times.

"Too much sunlight," Frank Merrill explained. "Lucky thing, we don't
any of us have to wear glasses. We'd certainly be up against it in this
double glare. Sand and sun both, you see! And you can thank whatever
instinct that's kept you all in training. This shipwreck is the most
perfect case I've ever seen of the survival of the fittest."

And in fact, they were all, except for Pete Murphy, big men, and all,
even he, active, strong-muscled, and in the pink of condition.

The huge tide had not entirely subsided, but there was a perceptible
diminution in the height of the waves. Up beyond the water-line lay a
fresh installment of jetsam. But, as before, they labored only to save
the flotsam. They worked all the morning.

In the afternoon, they dug a huge trench. Frank Merrill presiding, they
buried the dead with appropriate ceremony.

"Thank God, that's done," Ralph Addington said with a shudder. "I hate
death and everything to do with it."

"Yes, we'll all be more normal now they're gone," Frank Merrill added.
"And the sooner everything that reminds us of them is gone the better."

"Say," Honey Smith burst out the next morning. "Funny thing happened
to me in the middle the night. I woke out of a sound sleep--don't know
why--woke with a start as if somebody'd shaken me--felt something brush
me so close--well, it touched me. I was so dead that I had to work
like the merry Hades to open my eyes--seemed as if it was a full minute
before I could lift my eyelids. When I could make things out--damned
if there wasn't a bird--a big bird--the biggest bird I ever saw in my
life--three times as big as any eagle--flying over the water."

Nothing could better have indicated Honey's mental turmoil than the
fact that he talked