and lying down presently on the dry shingle with my back to him stared
moodily at the blaze till slowly the fatigues of the day told, my eyelids
dropped and, with many a fitful start and turn, at length I slept.

It was an hour before dawn, the fire had burnt low and I was dreaming of
an angry discussion with my tailor in New York as to the sit of my last
new trousers when a faint sound of moving shingle caught my quick seaman
ear, and before I could raise my head or lift a hand, a man's weight was
on me--a heavy, strong man who bore me down with irresistible force.
I felt the slap of his ice-cold hand upon my throat and his teeth in
the back of my neck! In an instant, though but half awake, with a yell
of surprise and anger I grappled with the enemy, and exerting all my
strength rolled him over. Over and over we went struggling towards the
fire, and when I got him within a foot or so of it I came out on top,
and, digging my knuckles into his throttle, banged his head upon the
stony floor in reckless rage, until all of a sudden it seemed to me
he was done for. I relaxed my grip, but the other man never moved.
I shook him again, like a terrier with a rat, but he never resented it.
Had I killed him? How limp and cold he was! And then all of a sudden
an uneasy feeling came upon me. I reached out, and throwing a handful
of dried stuff upon the embers the fire danced gaily up into the air,
and the blaze showed me I was savagely holding down to the gravel and
kneeling on the chest of that long-dead king from my grotto wall!

It was the man out of the ice without a doubt. There was the very niche
he had fallen from under the influence of the fire heat, the very recess,
exactly in his shape in every detail, whence he had stood gazing into
vacuity all those years. I left go my hold, and after the flutter in
my heart had gone down, apologetically set him up against the wall of
the cavern whence he had fallen; then built up the fire until twirling