This was the first question anybody had asked.  It added its infinitesimal weight to the wave of normality which was settling over them all.  Everybody visibly concentrated, listening for the answer.

It came after an instant, although Frank Merrill palpably pulled himself together to attack the problem.  “I was talking that matter over with Miner just yesterday,” he said.  “Miner said God, I wonder where he is now — and a dependent blind mother in Nebraska.”

“Cut that out,” Honey Smith ordered crisply.

“We — we — were trying to figure our chances in case of a wreck,” Frank Merrill continued slowly.  “You see, we’re out of the beaten path — way out.  Those days of drifting cooked our goose.  You can never tell, of course, what will happen in the Pacific where there are so many tramp craft.  On the other hand — " he paused and hesitated.  It was evident, now that he had something to expound, that Merrill had himself almost under command, that his hesitation arose from another cause.  “Well, we’re all men.  I guess it’s up to me to tell you the truth.  The sooner you all know the worst, the sooner you’ll pull yourselves together.  I shouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see a ship for several weeks — perhaps months.”

Another of their mute intervals fell upon them.  Dozens of waves flashed and crashed their way up the beach; but now they trailed an iridescent network of foam over the lilac-gray sand.  The sun raced high; but now it poured a flood of light on the green-gray water.  The air grew bright and brighter.  The earth grew warm and warmer.  Blue came into the sky, deepened — and the sea reflected it, Suddenly the world was one huge glittering bubble, half of which was the brilliant azure sky and half the burnished azure sea.  None of the five men looked at the sea and sky now.  The other four were considering Frank Merrill’s words and he was considering the other four.

“Lord, God!” Ralph Addington exclaimed suddenly.  “Think of being in a place like this six months or a year without a woman round!  Why, we’ll be savages at the end of three months.”  He snarled his words.  It was as if a new aspect of the situation — an aspect more crucially alarming than any other — had just struck him.

“Yes,” said Frank Merrill.  And for a moment, so much had he recovered himself, he reverted to his academic type.  “Aside from the regret and horror and shame that I feel to have survived when every woman drowned, I confess to that feeling too.  Women keep up the standards of life.  It would have made a great difference with us if there were only one or two women here.”

“If there’d been five, you mean,” Ralph Addington amended.  A feeble, white-toothed smile gleamed out of his dark beard.  He, too, had pulled himself together; this smile was not muscular contraction.  “One or two, and the fat would be in the fire.”

Nobody added anything to this.  But now the other three considered Ralph Addington’s words with the same effort towards concentration that they had brought to Frank Merrill’s.  Somehow his smile — that flashing smile which showed so many teeth against a background of dark beard — pointed his words uncomfortably.