He could see through the bridge windows from here, though it wasn't apparent if any of the crew had survived. No way to tell how many passengers had made it either, if any. If there were any, they weren't on this side of the crash.

When he first washed up here he worried they might have all been safer on the boat. Then the pickup truck plunged into the ocean, the driver likely unconscious inside. The survivors would have been thrown back and forth between their vehicles like pinballs, incapacitated before they hit the water.

"I th-think we did the r-right thing," Sheila said, her teeth still chattering.

"I hope so. Did you see anyone else?"

Her felt her nod against his chest. "M-most of them made it to... the sh-shore."

"Good. That's good. Think you can stand?"

She nodded. Removed his arms from around her and staggered to her feet.

He stood beside her, the wet rock firm beneath his feet. No algae slicked its surface. The injury to his head made him woozy, but he thought he could stand.

"M-Martin. Look."

Her face was pale as soap, her eyes wide. She pointed toward the beach.

He saw the stones standing in a circle in the sand and wondered how he hadn't noticed them before. He'd definitely looked in their direction to get his bearings when he washed up here. He must have overlooked them. Dismissed them for large tree stumps or irregular rocks. The crumbled foundation of an old dry dock.

Impossible to dismiss them now. They were standing stones, all right. How long they'd been here, he could only guess.

"This is where the Ruby sh-shipwrecked."

"You think so?"

She nodded. No way for her to be certain, but she seemed to be regardless.

Had the stones been here when the coffin ship crashed on the island in 1847? He had no way to know himself but he thought they had been. He suspected they might have been here much, much longer.

"I think you're right," he said.

Sheila began loping toward shore, favoring her injured leg. Her pants were torn. The gash beneath looked nasty. He took up behind her, brushing wet hair from the wound on his forehead.

The beach was sandy. He'd caught a glimpse of the shore on the other side of where the ferry had crashed before they jumped. All granite and jagged, crushed clam shells. The sand here was soft, leaving wet shoeprints behind them. Small flat rocks scattered everywhere, what they would have called "skippers" when he was a kid. A few ancient logs, gray and hollowed out. Beyond, the bluffs were covered in dense trees and underbrush. Late-winter pines rose like golden-tinged green spires against the lowering sun.

The sand within the standing stones was bare, devoid of rocks or ocean debris, as if someone had kept it that way, though it was flat and undisturbed until Sheila stepped into the circle, peering up at the tall stones, their strangely smooth surfaces black as if charred many, many years ago.