As he
walked toward it he heard a strange cry, unlike anything the barren
sands had borne before. Thinking it might be some strange sea bird
caught in the meshes of the sea-weed, he ran to the crate and
looked within. It was half filled with sea-moss and feathery
algae. The cry was repeated. He brushed aside the weeds with his
hands. It was not a wounded sea bird, but a living human child!
As he lifted it from its damp enwrappings he saw that it was an
infant eight or nine months old. How and when it had been brought
there, or what force had guided that elfish cradle to his very
door, he could not determine; but it must have been left early, for
it was quite warm, and its clothing almost dried by the blazing
morning sun. To wrap his coat about it, to run to his cabin with
it, to start out again with the appalling conviction that nothing
could be done for it there, occupied some moments. His nearest
neighbor was Trinidad Joe, a "logger," three miles up the river.
He remembered to have heard vaguely that he was a man of family.
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