Where the Pavement Ends Part 53

To seaward they could gaze down a dim vista of rocky and deserted islets where the moon showed like an open silver gateway, like a wide, bright door to the uncharted s.p.a.ces beyond--far beyond, as Merry's gesture showed her.

Of that consummation a whisper was caught, it seems, through the masking vines overhead: a last glimpse of them as they reeled there together on the brink.

"And you wasn't--you wasn't scared this time!" she gasped. "You ain't--you ain't scared now?"

"No," he said. "That is where we are going--out yonder.... I've a little prau canoe down here at the steps--if we can reach it.... It's where we belong, and our one chance. Over the curve of the earth--among the islands of the shallow sea. Where no one ever does go and n.o.body can follow."

"There's nothing much to eat. Nor drink, neither," she added quite practically. "We will die."

"What does that matter?... But a native might pull through, in the native way. And if it might happen to a native, it might happen to us.... Come!"

They went.