pointed his face was ghastly with fear, and I too looked back,
expecting to see I knew not what. Was he followed, and by whom? I had
thought at first there had been one following; but no, there was
nothing to be seen. Who could be following him in this desolate place?
But still he clutched my arm, and gibbered, and pointed back, and now
my eyes were playing tricks again: surely there was a shadow! No, there
was nothing there no human being at any rate. Possibly it had been a
jackal. So, soothing him as best I could, I helped the poor demented
fellow back to camp, he with many a backward look of fear, and I myself
with an uncanny feeling that we were being followed.

"Well, he was delirious for days; and when the cutter came back to pick
us up and take us to another spot farther up the coast he was too ill
to be moved, so we rigged up a bit of a tent and I was left to nurse
him till the boat returned again. It was a weird experience, alone in
that desolate spot with a madman for company; for though he quieted
down after the others had gone he still had the hallucination of being
followed and watched; and especially in the night, when I wanted to
sleep, he would seize me by the arm and point through the tent door to
the bright moonlight outside. 'There! there!' he would mutter, 'don't
you see him? look at his square-toed boots and brass buckles. See how
his ghastly dead eyes glare! Keep him from me, Jason; keep him from me;
he shall not have them back; he has been dead hundreds of years; keep
him from me they are mine!' And in my overstrung, nervous state I could
have sworn on one or two occasions that I too saw such a figure.

"He gradually got calmer and more himself, and then he told me a
strange tale of what had happened to him in the dunes.

"He had been overtaken by a sandstorm many miles from the camp, and had
struggled on till absolutely exhausted, not daring to lie down to rest
lest the fast whirling sand should overwhelm him; and when late at
night the wind had fallen he was hopelessly and utterly lost, and had
thrown himself down in a sheltered spot deep hollowed out by the wind
between two gigantic dunes, and had at once fallen into the deep sleep
of exhaustion.

"Then he had dreamed a startling and vivid dream that had seemed half
reality. He saw three men come down over the big dune to close beside
where he lay rough-looking men in a costume of long ago, with cocked
hats, broad breeches, and buckled shoe