exercised no care, but came ashore noisily. This helped me, for,
under the shield of his noise and making no more myself than
necessary, I managed to cover fifty feet by the time he had made
the beach. Here I lay down in the mud. It was cold and clammy,
and made me shiver, but I did not care to stand up and run the risk
of being discovered by his sharp eyes.

He walked down the beach straight to where he had left me lying,
and I had a fleeting feeling of regret at not being able to see his
surprise when he did not find me. But it was a very fleeting
regret, for my teeth were chattering with the cold.

What his movements were after that I had largely to deduce from the
facts of the situation, for I could scarcely see him in the dim
starlight. But I was sure that the first thing he did was to make
the circuit of the beach to learn if landings had been made by
other boats. This he would have known at once by the tracks
through the mud.

Convinced that no boat had removed me from the island, he next
started to find out what had become of me. Beginning at the pile
of clamshells, he lighted matches to trace my tracks in the sand.
At such times I could see his villanous face plainly, and, when the
sulphur from the matches irritated his lungs, between the raspy
cough that followed and the clammy mud in which I was lying, I
confess I shivered harder than ever.

The multiplicity of my footprints puzzled him. Then the idea that
I might be out in the mud must have struck him, for he waded out a
few yards in my direction, and, stooping, with his eyes searched