The Ship of Coral

g emerald; to southward, where the emerald passed into the living burning sapphire of the sky, lay a line of white clouds, swan-white and l

lades, immersed half a foot in the water, were tinted with azure, the floating scraps of seawe

rth, South, East or West. His only chance, so he told himself, lay in his sighting a ship. He was in the hands of chan

uitive optimism, and the fact that he had provisions and water enough to last him f

would he not have been justified? He felt nothing of remorse, nothing of that pity for the dead man which had come to him yesterday, when, standing by the reefs on the eastward of the island, he had looked

he zenith, the wind blowing steadily out of the southeast, warm as a woman's breath. Every now and

in flight, swift, brilliant against the blue, with staring sightless eyes; a phantom from the deep pursued by a phantom, d

ng itself basking on the water's surface, slipped away and vanished as the boat drew near. A great gull came along

the depths below to the heights above, from the little boat whispering and chuckling on the ripples to the

er horizon and shading his eyes with his hand saw, away o

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