CHAPTER XVI
LANDED
Dave must have gone through a fearful experience during the next hour.Its details he never knew. Familiar with the chances and accidents ofthe seafaring situation from childhood, however, when he opened his eyesagain he could figure out how kind his natural element had been to him.
He lay on a sandy shore. When his senses first came back a positivethrill permeated his frame.
A joyful cry arose to his lips. It was irrepressible. He was bruised,battered, soaked through, but the realization that he had landed, thathe once more rested on firm hard soil, overcame every sensation ofdiscomfort and pain.
"Landed," murmured Dave, in great delight, and that was the only idea hecould take into his confused mind for the moment.
He opened his eyes. It was clear starlight. He lay on a sandy beach.The waves lapped him to the knees. Beside him was the yawl, stove in atone side. He was still attached to it by the wrist held firmly in therope loop.
The yawl had proved a loyal convoy. As the tempest swept it along, Davemust have been held at least a part of the time out of the water. Thishad saved his life. Perhaps, he thought, he might at times also havelain across the upturned keel of the yawl.
At all events he was saved. There was not a bone in his body that didnot ache. His wrist was swollen greatly and the arm was numb to theshoulder.
"I'm badly battered," reflected Dave. "I must get my arm loose someway."
The youth groped in his pocket with his free hand. It was a laborioustask getting into the soaked garment. When he got his pocket knife out,Dave had to open it with his teeth.
He managed to cut the rope that imprisoned him, and fell away from theyawl with a feeling of great relief. Then he lay on the ground flat onhis back, and for some moments tried to think of nothing but absoluterest and comfort.
Dave struggled to an upright position finally. He was amazed at hisweakness and helplessness. Twice his feet refused to hold him up, andhe fell down. His injured arm was perfectly numb and flabby at hisside.
"This won't do at all," he thought, arousing himself. "I'm awfulthirsty, too. Well, I may be able to crawl."
Dave attempted to go up the beach. About a hundred feet away, throughbreaks in a belt of green trees, he could catch the sparkle of waterrunning over the rocks.
The moon had come up during all these various efforts to get intoaction. Dave could see his way clearly. He made in the direction ofthe water.
After slowly and painfully progressing for perhaps a hundred feet Davefound that his blood had begun to circulate. He pulled himself to hisfeet by means of some high bushes he had reached by this time.
Each moment his control increased over the numbed joints and muscles.
"This is better," said he, with satisfaction, as after some stumblingsteps, with the aid of a dead tree branch, he was able to limp uprightthough slowly.
Dave reached the water, a mere rill gushing down the shore bluff oversome rocks. It was clear and sparkling, and he took a deep draught ofthe life-giving element that invigorated him greatly.
"Hungry," thought Dave next. "Thanks to Stoodles--good!"
Right at his side Dave discovered a bush full of pods. When on theWindjammers' Island with Stoodles, the latter had shown him this verybush. Upon it grew pods full of kernels that tasted like cocoa. Daveate plentifully, though it was not a very satisfying meal.
"Now then," he spoke. "Oh, how could I have forgotten them!" he criedwith sudden self-reproachfulness.
It was quite natural in his forlorn, confused condition that Dave shouldfirst of all have thought only of himself. Still, his deep anxiety,poignantly aroused now as he thought of Daley and the others who hadbeen in the yawl with him, showed his heart to be in the right place.
He hurried down to the beach again, in his solicitude for his latecompanions forgetting how crippled he was, and had several falls.
"It's no use," said Dave sadly, after over an hour's search along thelonely shore. "They must have perished, Daley and the others."
The conviction saddened the youth for a long time. He sat down thinkingover things for nearly an hour.
"I don't know where I am," he said, rising to his feet, "and I musttrust to luck as to what is best next to do. This must be theWindjammers' Island. I think I could tell if I could get to some highpoint overlooking it or a part of it."
Dave looked doubtfully up beyond the shore cliffs where the higher hillsshowed. It looked to be a pretty hard task to scale those heights inhis present battered-up condition.
"I'm going to try it, anyhow," decided Dave, and he did.
"I can't go any farther--at least not just now," said Dave, an hourlater.
He sank down on a moss-covered rock overlooking a kind of valley. Itsother side, however, was higher up than the point where he was.
"I think another hundred feet will bring me to where I can get a goodview," thought the young diver; "that is in daylight, and daylight willsoon be here."
The pods, which tasted like cocoa, had been filling to Dave, but notexactly satisfying.
"It's like a fellow eating candy when he needs beefsteak," he mused. "Ishall have to hunt up something more substantial later on."
From his previous acquaintance with the island Dave knew that there weremany kinds of shellfish to be found, besides berries and other fruits,for the searching. He was not one bit afraid that he would have tostarve.
"I must watch out for the natives, too," he continued. "I must devisesome kind of a weapon of defense."
Dave thought over these things, lying restfully on the rock. He hadabout decided to resume his journey, calculating how long it would takehim to reach a certain point on which his eyes were fixed.
"Hello!" he exclaimed suddenly, sitting bolt-upright.
What had attracted Dave's attention was a light. It had appearedsuddenly on a ledge, almost at the top of the hill he was bent onclimbing.
It was no fixed light, but a broad swaying jet of fire. Whoever held itwas evidently swinging a lighted wisp of straw or something of thatsort.
"I wonder what that means," mused Dave. "I wonder who it can be.Probably a native. But, native or otherwise, there is method in the waythat light is moving. Yes, it certainly is a signal."
Such Dave decided it surely to be after watching the light for someminutes.
It described circular and other figures. It seemed directed at a pointsomewhere down the valley.
"I would like to know what is going on up there," said Dave, rousing up."It would give me an inkling as to whom I have to deal with and where Ireally am."
After a further rest of a few minutes the young diver resumed the ascentof the hill.