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eyes, and set to work again. Had he been less of a sailor, and of a more observing nature, lie might have taken notice of the little footprints in the sand by his side, which the rising tide slowly obliterated.
As the sun was unblushingly preparing its bed in the west, he pushed the little boat into the sea, and rowed, with lusty, impatient strokes, toward their camp in the sand-carpeted bay.
As he neared the spot, Flora ;." ['.. _; ," ."-".S'-~ ---i'. was not in sight, but some of her things strewn around told him that she was not far away.
The first thing he noticed was her jacket, then her saucy little chip straw hat — then her shoes. Strange; was she bathing at this hour of the day ?
But she was nowhere in sight. A panic seized upon him, and he ran up the beach, calling her, frantically, by name. Only the waving palms gave back a mocking echo.
In the semidarkness, he explored the treacherous rocks of the head. He
thought even of setting out to circle the island, but the last blood-red ray of the sun, vanishing suddenly from the sea, warned him of its futility.
For two days, and two nights, he waited, sleepless and without food, on the beach ; then he seemed to realize that she had passed away from him, probably into the sea, and he put out, rowing southeast, in a dazed, miserable sort of way. Two days afterward he reached Niihau, without mishap,
FLORA FINDS EDWARD ASLEEP
and from Honolulu took a steamer for San Francisco.
It is hard to fathom why Flora did such a desperate, foolhardy thing as to flee from the man that she really loved, but, as she leaned over his sleeping body in the little boat on the beach, she must have felt that, with rescue near, she stood between Willard and the girl he loved back in the States. He lr >-" _.""~:""~^|1':1 had done a heroic thing in marrying her, out of a sense of honor, and, suddenly, she thought that her sacrifice should measure up to his. She determined, as by inspiration, to place all her clothing, but what was absolutely necessary, on the beach — it was a sure token of her death by drowning — and to flee deep inland into the woods. He would b e free t o work out his own destiny, then.
For two nights she came down to the fringe of palms, and watched him sitting, hunched up, by the fire. Now and then, he dejectedly put fresh wood on it, but, tho the sobs swelled and strangled in her breast, she stuck bravely to her resolve, and did not warn him of her presence.
A week later she saw an incoming, native schooner off the head, and promptly signalled it. The schooner's people saw her, and sent a boat ashore. By paying out half of her scanty store of money, they agreed to take her direct to Honolulu. She arrived
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