pretty boy, wait for mother! I am coming to you. Listen, David;
he cries--he cries so pitifully; listen! Can't you hear it?"

I DID hear it! Clear and distinct, out of the deadly still
darkness before us, came a faint, wailing cry. What was it? Was
I, too, going mad, or WAS there something out there--something
that cried and moaned--longing for human love, yet ever
retreating from human footsteps? I am not a superstitious man;
but my nerve had been shaken by my long trial, and I was weaker
than I thought. Terror took possession of me--terror unnameable.
I trembled in every limb; clammy perspiration oozed from my
forehead; I was possessed by a wild impulse to turn and flee--
anywhere, away from that unearthly cry. But Josephine's cold
hand gripped mine firmly, and led me on. That strange cry still
rang in my ears. But it did not recede; it sounded clearer and
stronger; it was a wail; but a loud, insistent wail; it was
nearer--nearer; it was in the darkness just beyond us.

Then we came to it; a little dory had been beached on the pebbles
and left there by the receding tide. There was a child in it--a
boy, of perhaps two years old, who crouched in the bottom of the
dory in water to his waist, his big, blue eyes wild and wide with
terror, his face white and tear-stained. He wailed again when he
saw us, and held out his little hands.

My horror fell away from me like a discarded garment. THIS child
was living. How he had come there, whence and why, I did not
know and, in my state of mind, did not question. It was no cry
of parted spirit I had heard--that was enough for me.