The props were too weak to begin
with. Ants have been at work there--ants after the men. A death-trap, at
best. One can die but once, but there are many manners of death."
The girl glanced about fearfully, in search of the watcher or follower
whom she had glimpsed once among the trees; but if he existed, he had
concealed himself. Nothing met her eyes but the deepening shadows of the
short vistas between the living columns of the still roof of leaves.
She looked at the man beside her expectantly, tenderly, with suppressed
affright and a sort of awed wonder.
"I have also thought of these people's boat," Heyst went on. "We could
get into that, and--only they have taken everything out of her. I have
seen her oars and mast in a corner of their room. To shove off in an
empty boat would be nothing but a desperate expedition, supposing even
that she would drift out a good distance between the islands before the
morning. It would only be a complicated manner of committing suicide--to
be found dead in a boat, dead from sun and thirst. A sea mystery.
I wonder who would find us! Davidson, perhaps; but Davidson passed
westward ten days ago. I watched him steaming past one early morning,
from the jetty."
"You never told me," she said.
"He must have been looking at me through his big binoculars. Perhaps, if
I had raised my arm--but what did we want with Davidson then, you and
I? He won't be back this way for three weeks or more, Lena.
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