Her thoughts went then to Lord Huntingford, her husband.  There was scant regret in her heart over the fate of the old nobleman.  She was not cruel enough to rejoice, but there was a certain feeling of relief which she could not quell, try as she would, in the belief that he had gone down to death and a younger, nobler man spared.  The last she saw of her husband was when he broke past the officers and plunged out upon the deck, leaving her to her fate.  That he had been instantly swept overboard she had no doubt.  All she could remember of her thoughts at that thrilling moment was the brief, womanly cry for mercy to his soul.  After that came the lurch which prostrated her, and then Ridgeway’s cry, “Be brave, dearest!”

Bitter tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought of the strong-hearted Veath and the forsaken American girl—­and all of the others in that merry company.  It was not in such anguish as this that she summed up her individual loss.

Ridgeway was soon in the thick of the jungle.  For two or three hours he plunged through beautiful glades, over swelling knolls, across tiny streams, but always through a waste of nature that, to all appearance, had never been touched by a human being save himself.

At last he dropped wearily upon a grassy mound and resigned himself to the conviction that they had been swept upon an absolutely unexplored, perhaps undiscovered, portion of the globe.  It did not occur to his discouraged mind that he had covered less than five miles of what might be a comparatively small piece of uninhabited land and that somewhere not far distant lay the civilization for which he sought.  His despairing mind magnified the horrors of their position to such an extent that he actually wondered how long it would be before death broke down their feeble resistance.  Arising despondently, he turned his steps in the direction of the little cave.

It was not long before he reached a small sandy stretch about five hundred yards from the spot where he had left Lady Tennys.  Little waves licked the short strip of sand lazily, seeming to invite him down to meet them on their approach from the big sea whose tidings of woe they bore.  High, dark and ominous loomed the great rock on the south.  He could not see the cave or the rivulet on account of obstructing trees and a curve in the shore, so he walked down to the very edge of the water, expecting to obtain a view from that point.

A startling discovery flashed upon him as he strode upon the beach.  There, in the white, soft sand were plainly revealed the footprints of a bare human foot.  He rubbed his eyes and gazed again.  Before him were a number of small footprints, running to and from the water.  In a dazed, wondering way he sought to follow them, eventually finding where a single line of tracks led directly toward a clump of trees to his left.  At the edge of this he found a confusion of bewildering barefoot moulds, mixed with others unquestionably made by a shoe on