hat does not seem to have entered their heads.

Never in all my experience, reader, was I in such a predicament. This
is no fancy sketch. It is true, every word of it. Had the picnickers
been old ladies, I might have shut my eyes, and made a break out of
the water for my clothes; but three of them, at least, were young,
and, worse than that, very pretty! The courage for so daring and
monstrous an act was not in me. I felt that it would be easier to die;
and yet to die in this way is pretty hard when it comes to a practical
test. What the deuce was to be done? I could not speak a word of
Finnish, otherwise I might have implored them to retire a few hundred
yards and let me get my clothes. With a shirt, or even a
pocket-handkerchief, I might have charged upon the enemy; but I had
nothing--not even a hat--as a shield against the battery of sparkling
eyes that bore down upon me! A thousand expedients flashed through my
mind in the extremity of my sufferings. I would slip out of the water
on all-fours, and creep over the rocks like a seal, but that would be
an extremely ungraceful way of approaching a bevy of strange ladies.
Then it occurred to me if I could get hold of a bunch of sea-weeds, it
might serve as a temporary substitute for a costume; but the weeds had
all drifted away by this time, and not a patch was in sight. Even a
large oyster-shell might have afforded some assistance; but who ever
heard of oyster-shells in the Gulf of Finland? Nothing remained save
to dive down and seize a big rock, detach it from the bottom, and,
holding it up before me, make a break for the pile of clothes; yet
when I came to consider the preposterous spectacle that a middle-aged
man would present in a state of nudity charging full tilt upon a party
of ladies, with a big rock in his hands and a gleam of desperation in
his eye, the idea seemed too monstrous to be entertained, and I was
forced to give it up. The difficulty was becoming really serious.
Doubtless it appears very funny to my California friends, but I can
assure them it was pretty near death to me. I would have given ten
dollars for the poorest cotton shirt that was ever dealt out by an
Indian agent to a Reservation Digger; nay, transparent as the blankets
are, I might have made one serve my purpose by doubling it three or
four times and holding it up front.

All this, however, though very well in its way, did not relieve me
from my embarrassing predicament. Something must be