Then a moan from the sleeping child, or a sight of a streaming ray of moonlight on the face of its mother would send that nameless Voice shivering back to its deep hiding-place—­and the man would stoop and bail again.

Each evening as it fell saw their anxious eyes looking west and north and south for land, and always there was only the weary waste of waters.  And as the sun rose, they hardly dared open their eyes to the unbroken rim of blue-grey that circled them like a steel prison.  They saw the thin edge of the moon grow to full blaze and then fade to a corn sickle again as days and nights grew to weeks and a whole month had passed.

Every morning, as the pearl-grey sea turned to pink and then to gleaming blue, they knelt on the raft between the canoes and turned their faces up to their Father in prayer, and never did the sun sink behind the rim of waters without the sound of their voices rising into the limitless sky with thanks for safe-keeping.

Slowly the pile of cocoa-nuts lessened.  Each one of them with its sweet milk and flesh was more precious to them than a golden chalice set with rubies.  The drops of milk that dripped from them were more than ropes of pearls.

At last eight Sundays had followed one upon another; and now at the end of the day there was only the half of one cocoa-nut remaining.  When that was gone—­all would be over.  So they knelt down under the cloudless sky on an evening calm and beautiful.  They were on that invisible line in the Great Pacific where the day ends and begins.  Those seven on the tiny craft were, indeed, we cannot but believe, the last worshippers in all the great world-house of God as Sunday drew to its end just where they were.  Was it to be the last time that they would pray to God in this life?

Prayer ended; night was falling.  Elikana the leader, who had kept their spirits from utterly failing, stood up and gazed out with great anxious eyes before the last light should fail.

“Look, there upon the edge of the sea where the sun sets.  Is it—­” He could hardly dare to believe that it was not the mirage of his weary brain.  But one and another and then all peered out through the swiftly waning light and saw that indeed it was land.

Then a squall of wind sprang up, blowing them away from the land.  Was this last hope, by a fine ecstasy of torture, to be dangled before them and then snatched away?  But with the danger came the help; with the wind came the rain; cool, sweet, refreshing, life-giving water.  Then the squall of wind dropped and changed.  They hoisted the one sail that had not blown to tatters, and drove for land.

Yet their most awful danger still lay before them.  The roar of the breakers on the cruel coral reef caught their ears.  But there was nothing for it but to risk the peril.  They were among the breakers which caught and tossed them on like eggshells.  The scourge of the surf swept them; a woman, a man—­even the child, were torn from them and ground on the ghastly teeth of the coral.  Five were swept over with the craft into the still, blue lagoon, and landing they fell prone upon the shore, just breathing and no more, after the giant buffeting of the thundering rollers, following the long, slow starvation of their wonderful journey in the hut on the canoes among “the waters of the wondrous isles.”