For a moment he knelt helpless, with idle hands. He knew quite well that though the vessel seemed steering straight for the island, she might pass it a long distance away; a smoke signal could not but attract her attention, yet he was debarred from making it.

The tricky spirit that seemed to haunt the islet seemed still active and at work, filling his pockets with jewels, yet holding back from him the means of escape.

He rose to his feet and stared about him, trying to remember when he had last lit his pipe; then he came back along the pathway to the beach, searching the ground, the sand, casting his eyes hither and thither, the sweat running from every pore. He searched the whole width of the beach for twenty yards from the fallen palm trees towards the coral spur; the gulls were calling and fishing as of old and their voices seemed mocking him, he, who, burning for action, had yet to walk up and down slowly as an old man, with head bent and eyes cast before him after the fashion of a penitent.

There was no sign of the box; it was a small affair, one of those cheap nickel tinder boxes they sell to sailors, a “smoker’s friend” containing a wheel armed with a bit of flint, a spring which rotated the wheel, and a tiny wick which caught the spark.

He was turning from the beach in despair when his284 foot struck against what seemed a pebble half covered by sand. It was the “smoker’s friend.” It had fallen last night from his pocket and the wind had blown the sand over it. He seized it and with it in his hand came running back to the heap of brushwood. He first turned his eyes to the ship. She was larger, nearer, yet seemingly farther from the track of the island; as far as he could judge she might pass it by some three miles. He flung himself on his knees by the heap of brushwood and pressing the spring of the tinder box, struck a spark. It caught on the inflammable wick, the wick smouldered, and then, as he blew at it, broke into flame. It was a very small flame, not nearly as big as that given by a large sized wax match. Then he approached the tiny point of light to one of the dead twigs of the brushwood. He was kneeling with his back to the wind so as to protect the flame, but for all his care a breath across his shoulder blew it out.

He cursed. Then holding the box close to his body, he re-lit the wick.

The wetting the box had received during the hurricane must have damaged its spirit; yesterday when he had lit his pipe with it he had done so with great difficulty, but the flame was even more feeble to-day; it went out again at the critical moment, and again, and again; the brushwood, perhaps, from the effect of the sea-salt that had dried upon it, was hard to ignite; had he but a piece of paper the task would have been easy, but there was not a scrap on the island.

Then he remembered Sagesse’s pocket-book, which he had buried in the sand. He was rising to hunt for it when he remembered also the banknote that he had taken from the papers of Sagesse and which was in his pocket.

To find the pocket-book might take a long time, for the285 sand had blown smoothly over the place where he had buried it; the banknote was to ............