When the party reached the stretch beyond the banana grove, they saw the schooner tossing and pulling at her anchor.  The captain shouted to them to hurry.  The boat awaiting them at the beach was obliged to make three trips.  Father Carillo went in the first boat; Dorthe remained for the last.  She was the last, also, to ascend the ladder at the ship’s side.  As she put her foot on deck, and confronted again the pale face and shining robes of the young priest, she screamed, and leapt from the vessel into the waves.  The chief and his tribe shouted their entreaties to return.  But she had disappeared, and the sky was black.  The captain refused to lower the boat again.  He had already weighed anchor, and he hurriedly represented that to remain longer in the little bay, with its reefs and rocks, its chopping waves, would mean death to all.  The priest was obliged to sacrifice the girl to the many lives in his keep.

II

Dorthe darted through the hissing waves, undismayed by the darkness or the screaming wind; she and the ocean had been friends since her baby days.  When a breaker finally tossed her on the shore, she scrambled to the bank, then stood long endeavouring to pierce the rain for sight of the vessel.  But it was far out in the dark.  Dorthe was alone on the island.  For a time she howled in dismal fashion.  She was wholly without fear, but she had human needs and was lonesome.  Then reason told her that when the storm was over the ship would return to seek her; and she fled and hid in the banana grove.  The next morning the storm had passed; but the ship was nowhere to be seen, and she started for home.

The wind still blew, but it had veered.  This time it caught the sand from the skeletons, and bore it rapidly back to the dunes.  Dorthe watched the old bones start into view.  Sometimes a skull would thrust itself suddenly forth, sometimes a pair of polished knees; and once a long finger seemed to beckon.  But it was an old story to Dorthe, and she pursued her journey undisturbed.

She climbed the mountain, and went down into the valley and lived alone.  Her people had left their cooking utensils.  She caught fish in the creek, and shot birds with her bow and arrow.  Wild fruits and nuts were abundant.  Of creature comforts she lacked nothing.  But the days were long and the island was very still.  For a while she talked aloud in the limited vocabulary of her tribe.  After a time she entered into companionship with the frogs and birds, imitating their speech.  Restlessness vanished, and she existed contentedly enough.

Two years passed.  The moon flooded the valley one midnight.  Dorthe lay on the bank of the creek in the fern forest.  She and the frogs had held long converse, and she was staring up through the feathery branches, waving in the night wind, at the calm silver face which had ignored her overtures.  Upon this scene entered a man.  He was attenuated and ragged.  Hair and beard fell nearly to his waist.  He leaned on a staff, and tottered like an old man.