discovered some bulky thing
lodged, as my raft had been, upon the near-by rocks. The two days had
told upon me. My pajamas were in ribbons; my canvas shoes torn, and my
flesh bruised. My feet, too, were cut and blistered and my hands raw. I
had already tired of talking aloud to myself and more and more often I
caught myself turning with a sudden start to peer apprehensively at the
fringe of the forest. To my growing morbidness it seemed that over the
beauty of the place hung an impalpable but certain curse. I waded out
eagerly to the fresh bit of salvage and found a seaman's chest with
quaintly knotted handles of tarred rope. It was of stout workmanship and
its heavy locks and hinges had endured without injury the buffeting of
the sea. The name of J. H. Lawrence still legible upon one end brought
back with startling vividness the memory of a man waiting with stoical
amusement the coming of death. Laboriously enough I dragged it in,
halting often to pant and wipe the sweat out of my eyes with my forearm.

The sun was sinking over the shoulder of the mountain when I at last
arrived, exhausted but still tugging at my prize, upon the plateau of my
cliff apartment. I lay a long while, my heart pounding with exertion,
before I was equal to the task of attacking its lock with a stone and my
sheath knife, and after that it was some moments before the lock yielded
and I raised the heavy lid. First there met my eyes a scattered
collection of souvenir postcards, much discolored and faded, but
sufficiently preserved to awaken a clamor of protest and longing. There
were tantalizing pictures of the Cafe de Paris and Trafalgar Square and
the _bund_ at Hong Kong.

Young Mr. Lawrence must have been a confirmed souvenir-buyer. I could
trace his odyssey by trivial things he had picked up here and there.
Two curved daggers with turquoise settings in the hilt had come from the
bazaars of Damascus or Jerusalem. A copper incense-burner with a package
of scented tapers had been brought from Tokio or Nagasaki. Equally
useless things filled package after package.

No mission chest piously outfitted at home ever carried to the remote
heathen a more useless assortment of unnecessaries than this one brought
to me. There was not a shirt, not an article of utility, only trinkets
as serviceable as doll-babies to a prizefighter. At last, however, I
came upon two packages carefully wrapped in sail-cloth. So painstaking
and secure had been their packin