e cautious companions, he
had stolen away from the village and come back alone.

I did some swift thinking. I was unarmed and helpless on a tiny islet,
and a yellow barbarian, whom I had reason to fear, was coming after
me. Any place was safer than the island, and I turned immediately to
the water, or rather to the mud. As he began to flounder ashore
through the mud. I started to flounder out into it, going over the
same course which the Chinese had taken in landing me and in returning
to the junk.

Yellow Handkerchief, believing me to be lying tightly bound, 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
clam-shells, 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 the dim
surface long and carefully. He could not have been more than fifteen
feet from me, and had he lighted a match he would surely have
discovered me.

He returned to the beach and clambered about over the rocky backbone,
again hunting for me with lighted matches. The closeness of the shore
impelled me to fur