He remembered all that had passed clearly and distinctly and the miracle of that blue sky above him, after the black and howling chaos of the night, filled his heart with thankfulness untold.
He rose to his feet. His clothes were stiff with sea-salt, his eyes half-blinded by the light. Then he cried out in astonishment. The island, under the sun, and surrounded by the racing amethyst of the sea, lay glittering white as frost. It was sea-salt from the spray of the night before. The palm trees were no longer there. There was nothing to be seen but the winter-white bushes beneath the burning sun. Bodies were washing ashore on the beach close to him, but he scarcely glanced at them, the desolation before him held him motionless and the knowledge that everything was blown away, provisions, tent, everything!
He crossed to the southern beach. There lay the palms, snapped off and dashed into the sand; a little mound just by the sea edge drew him towards it; it was the case of provisions. Hurled along by the wind, it had struck a lump of coral and been sanded over; it had been shaken almost to pieces and a few blows with his heel burst the staves apart. It was packed with tins of American preserved meat, such as are exported especially to the West Indies. He haggled a tin open with his knife and set to on its contents. As he ate he saw something tangled in the fronds of one of the broken palms. He came to it, kicked the sand aside and found the bag of biscuit. Things were not, then, so bad; but his mind was so dazed and benumbed that he scarcely felt satisfaction at the sight of the food and the knowledge that for a time, at least, he was saved from starvation. He stood chewing the meat and gazing about him, as an animal might gaze on finding itself in a strange place.
Ever since his first landing upon it with Yves, the island had seemed possessed of some diabolical presence. Yet on looking back, there was nothing to be perceived but just an ordinary and logical chain of events. With the exception of finding the gold and the coral ship in the lagoon, all the events, even the killing of Yves, came within the province of ordinary sequence. Yet how sinister were they, taken as a whole, from the first glimpse of the ship in the water to the last glimpse of _La Belle Arlésienne_ hurled to her death by the waves.