drawing my pay? If I could but find
the rug when I got back to Seth, gods! but I would try if it would not
return whence I had come, and as swiftly, out of all these silly coils
and adventuring.

So musing, presently the firelight died down, and bulky forms of
hide-wrapped woodmen sleeping on the floor slowly disappeared in
obscurity like ranges of mountains disappearing in the darkness of
night. All those uncouth forms, and the throb of the sea outside,
presently faded upon my senses, and I slept the heavy sleep of one
whose wakefulness gives way before an imperious physical demand. All
through the long hours of the night, while the waves outside champed
upon the gravels, and the woodmen snored and grunted uneasily as they
simultaneously dreamt of the day's hunting and digested its proceeds, I
slept; and then when dawn began to break I passed from that heavy
stupor into another and lighter realm, wherein fancy again rose
superior to bodily fatigue, and events of the last few days passed in
procession through my mind.

I dreamt I was lunching at a fashionable seaside resort with Polly at
my side, and An kept bringing us melons, which grew so monstrous every
time a knife was put into them that poor Polly screamed aloud. I dreamt
I was afloat on a raft, hotly pursued by my tailor, whose bare and
shiny head--may Providence be good to him!--was garlanded with roses,
while in his fist was a bunch of unpaid bills, the which he waved
aloft, shouting to me to stop. And thus we danced down an ink-black
river until he had chiveyed me into the vast hall of the Admiralty,
where a fearsome Secretary, whose golden teeth rattled and dropped from
his head with mingled cold and anger, towered above me as he asked why
I was absent from my ship without leave. And I was just mumbling out
excuses while stooping to pick up his golden dentistry, when some one
stirring in the hut aroused me. I started up on my elbow and looked
around. Where was I? For a minute all was confused and dark. The
heavy mound-like forms of sleeping men, the dim outlines of their
hunting gear upon the walls, the pale sea beyond, half seen through the
open doorway, just turning livid in the morning light; and then as my
eyes grew more accustomed to the obscurity, and my stupid senses
returned, I recognised the surroundings, and, with a sigh, remembered
yesterday's adventures.

However, it would never do to mope; so, rising silently and picking a
way through