He half led, half carried the girl toward the pile of stone until he stopped before it. The light from the moon came stronger. He saw the tall object, the top of which had been in the shadow now fully revealed.
"Why, it is a cross!" he exclaimed, under his breath, greatly surprised at this sacred emblem of religion.
"Then your God and my God are the same," whispered the girl.
"I believe so. You see," he continued, "nothing has happened to us." He laid his hand on the altar, "this must have been a place where your people who came from beyond the sea worshipped God."
It was, indeed, obvious that this was the primitive church of those first settlers upon the island where they had performed their simple rites, the simulacrum of which in uncomprehended words of prayer had alone survived the centuries of isolation and separation from their kind.
Beekman marveled that he had not thought of it before; but who could have expected to find a Christian church on an unvisited island in the South Seas, even though it was obvious that some, at least, of the present denizens thereof were white people, or had white blood in their veins? That ruined tower-like structure topping the front gable, at which he had wondered, had evidently been a belfry, and perhaps it too had carried a cross. Well, that cross-like tower had fallen away, but here, on what was surely a rude altar, in a fair state of preservation, stood the rudely fashioned symbol of the faith, even though it was made of frailer, more perishable wood.
Beekman was not a religious man, but even an atheist might have succumbed to the influences of such a place. He felt the cross reverently with a tender touch, confirming his eyesight; and then, where old Kobo knelt uncomprehendingly, following the customs of the past, he reverently knelt down. He rested his hands on that altar and bowed his head to it. After a moment, awe-struck Truda followed his example and knelt by his side.
What did he pray knowingly? What did the woman pray ignorantly? The man, that he might have strength to be a clean man, still to cherish and be faithful to high ideals in a land of no ideals; to observe the laws of God in this place where there were no laws of man, to act honorably toward this sweet and trusting child by his side; to take no advantage of her ignorance, her innocence, her devotion. Yes, he prayed for strength, and he prayed for deliverance from the island, that he might take her back to her own kind, that he might add to the graces she naturally enjoyed the refinements and good things of a civilization which he alone, ragged, tattered castaway that he was, had enjoyed and knew the meaning of. And he did not forget to pray that his hands might be cleansed of the blood of man that was upon them.