with bags or chests, some
without,--came eager men, who climbed to the dock, and answering no
questions of the gathering crowd of dock-loungers, scattered into the
side-streets. Then three other men appeared on the rail, who shook
their fists, and swore, and shouted for the police, calling
particularly for the apprehension of three dark-faced, long-haired
fellows with big hats.

In the light of later developments it is known that the police
responded, and with the assistance of boarding-house runners gathered
in that day nearly all of this derelict crew,--even to the cautious
boatswain,--who were promptly and severely punished for mutiny and
desertion. But the later developments failed to show that the three
dark-faced men were ever seen again.

PRIMORDIAL

Gasping, blue in the face, half drowned, the boy was flung
spitefully--as though the sea scorned so poor a victory--high on the
sandy beach, where succeeding shorter waves lapped at him and retired.
The encircling life-buoy was large enough to permit his crouching
within it. Pillowing his head on one side of the smooth ring, he wailed
hoarsely for an interval, then slept--or swooned. The tide went down
the beach, the typhoon whirled its raging center off to sea, and the
tropic moon shone out, lighting up, between the beach and barrier reef,
a heaving stretch of oily lagoon on which appeared and disappeared
hundreds of shark-fins quickly darting, and, out on the barrier reef,
perched high, yet still pounded by the ocean combers raised by the
storm, a fragment of ship's stern with a stump of mizzenmast. The
elevated position of the fragment, the quickly darting dorsal fins, and
the absence of company for the child on the beach spoke, too plainly,
of shipwreck, useless boats, and horrible death.

Sharks must sleep like other creatures, and they nestle in hollows at
the bottom and in coral caves, or under overhanging ledges of the reefs
which attract them. The first swimmer may pass safely by night, seldom
the second. Like she-wolves, fiendish cats, and vicious horses, they
have been known to show mercy to children. For one or both reasons,
this child had drifted to the beach unharmed.

Anywhere but on a bed of hot sand near the equator the sleep in wet
clothing of a three-year-old boy might have been fatal; but salt water
carries its own remedy for the evils of its moisture, and he wakened at
daylight with strength to rise and cry out his protest of loneli