ad
he went back to the beach and prowled around for some time. I was
hoping he would give up and go, for by this time I was suffering
severely from the cold. At last he waded out to his skiff and rowed
away. What if this departure of Yellow Handkerchief's were a sham?
What if he had done it merely to entice me ashore?

The more I thought of it the more certain I became that he had made a
little too much noise with his oars as he rowed away. So I remained,
lying in the mud and shivering. I shivered till the muscles of the
small of my back ached and pained me as badly as the cold, and I had
need of all my self-control to force myself to remain in my miserable
situation.

It was well that I did, however, for, possibly an hour later, I
thought I could make out something moving on the beach. I watched
intently, but my ears were rewarded first, by a raspy cough I knew
only too well. Yellow Handkerchief had sneaked back, landed on the
other side of the island, and crept around to surprise me if I had
returned.

After that, though hours passed without sign of him, I was afraid to
return to the island at all. On the other hand, I was equally afraid
that I should die of the exposure I was undergoing. I had never
dreamed one could suffer so. I grew so cold and numb, finally, that I
ceased to shiver. But my muscles and bones began to ache in a way that
was agony. The tide had long since begun to rise, and, foot by foot,
it drove me in toward the beach. High water came at three o'clock, and
at three o'clock I drew myself up on the beach, more dead than alive,
and too helpless to have offered any resistence had Yellow
Handkerchief swooped down upon me.

But no Yellow Handkerchief appeared. He had given up and gone back to
Point Pedro. Nevertheless, I was in a deplorable, not to say a
dangerous, condition. I could not stand upon my feet, much less walk.
My clammy, muddy, garments clung to me like sheets of ice. I thought I
should never get them off. So numb and lifeless were my fingers, and
so weak was I, that it seemed to take an hour to get off my shoes. I
had not the strength to break the porpoise-hide laces, and the knots
defied me. I repeatedly beat my hands upon the rocks to get some sort
of life into them. Sometimes I felt sure I was going to die.

But in the end,--after several centuries, it seemed to me,--I got off
the last of my clothes. The water was now close at hand, and I crawled
painfully into it and washed the m