ow my eyes have a strange brightness, a swift alertness
of movement.

At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach
watching for a ship, hoping and praying for a ship.
I counted on the "Ipecacuanha" returning as the year wore on;
but she never came. Five times I saw sails, and thrice smoke;
but nothing ever touched the island. I always had a bonfire ready,
but no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island was taken to account
for that.

It was only about September or October that I began to think of making
a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at
my service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling.
I had never done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent
day after day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees.
I had no ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewith to make ropes;
none of the abundant creepers seemed limber or strong enough,
and with all my litter of scientific education I could not devise
any way of making them so. I spent more than a fortnight
grubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and on
the beach where the boats had been burnt, looking for nails
and other stray pieces of metal that might prove of service.
Now and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and go leaping
off when I called to it. There came a season of thunder-storms
and heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at last the raft
was completed.

I was delighted with it. But with a certain lack of practical sense
which has always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the sea;
and before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen
to pieces. Perhaps it is as well that I was saved from launching it;
but at the time my misery at my failure was so acute that for some
days I simply moped on the beach, and stared at the water and thought
of death.

I did not, however, mean to die, and an incident occurred that warned
me unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so,--for each
fresh day was fraught with increasing danger from the Beast People.

I was lying in the shade of the enclosure wall, staring out to sea,
when I was startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel,
and starting round found the little pink sloth-creature blinking
into my face. He had long since lost speech and active movement,
and the lank hair of the little brute grew thicker every day and his
stumpy claws more askew. He made a moaning