re we
the only ones?"

"I cannot tell," he replied, smiling a little. "I am blind, you see."

"Yes, I know," she said softly. "I saw you on shipboard."

"The first consciousness I had of you," he continued, "was when I
stumbled over you while getting my breakfast."

"Breakfast? Where is it?"

He laid one hand on the pile of clams. She looked down at them, and
burst out laughing, uncontrollably.

"It is not much," he said, "but we primitive people are simple in our
needs. I worked to get them, goodness knows."

She was looking around her, twisting her long brown hair in her hands.
At last she shuddered. "It's desperately lonely. Nothing but sea and
mountains. I'm afraid I can't walk," she said.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Can't walk?"

She turned toward him, smiling faintly. "I was struck when I washed
overboard, and my ankle, I think, is broken. I am sorry," she added.

Her tone was slightly apologetic, and he laughed nervously. "Oh, that's
all right," he said, assuringly, then stammered, "I mean--" He
hesitated, and she laughed.

"I mean that we can get along," he continued, stubbornly. "Heaven knows
I am sorry. But you can't realize what it means to have some one near
you who can see."

She did not answer for a minute, then said quietly: "Shall we breakfast
before beginning anything else?"

He reached in his pocket for his penknife. It was gone. The blank
expression of disgust on his face made her ask: "What is it?"

"My knife," he said. "It is gone."

They sat opposite each other, the clams between them. Each followed a
different trend of ideas. He was raging at this last mishap, and
considering means of opening the clams. She was conjecturing over the
fate of the City of Panama and wondering what she could do, alone here
with this blind man. Her night-gown and a heavy skirt had been all she
had worn when she had rushed on deck in the night. She looked around her
at the rocks and thought how foolish she had been to leave her shoes.

At last he rose and began to grope back along the beach.

Noticing that his hands were torn and bleeding, she said, hastily:
"Don't do that. What are you looking for, anyway?"

"Stones," he answered, stopping.

"I will direct you," she to him. "Left--right--a little ahead now."
Guided by her, he moved until his hand touched a small stone. He found
two of them and came back to her side.

She watched him while he tried to break a clam-shell between the two
rocks. "