self at the singular
appropriateness of the name.

Even his bathing dress seemed designed expressly to add to his
rotundity. It was one of those queer garments bearing a faint
resemblance to a convict's uniform, and the wide stripes of it went
round and round his figure like hoops on a barrel. It was so funny that
I chuckled again and forgot all about my burning feet and my burst boot.

Presently he stopped his antics and looked over my way. He gave one
glance at me, and then started to run inshore with short, jumpy little
steps. Something seemed to have struck him all of a sudden, and I was
just beginning to wonder what the deuce it could be when, out of the
corner of my eyes, I caught sight of a pile of neatly folded clothes
thrust into the cleft of the rock a little above my head. I began to
understand then. I looked more disreputable than I really was; my suit
was in the last stages of ruinous decay, while his brand-new clothes
just above me would have been a gift from the gods to a man with less
conscience and more figure than I possessed. He evidently presumed on
the strength of my proximity that I had evil designs on his clothes, but
he needn't have troubled himself. If I could judge anything from his own
figure I would have been completely lost in them. I didn't like to
confirm his suspicions by running away now that I found I was observed,
so I just sat there and waited for him. There was a piece of something
that looked very like driftwood protruding from the sand close to me,
and I kicked idly at it as he came pounding up the beach. It was set
loosely in the sand, and a more accurate kick than usual knocked it out
of its resting-place. Something queer about it caught my eye, and I bent
over to pick it up.

"Whatever else it is, it isn't driftwood," I said to myself. "I'll
bet----," and then I stopped short, for I remembered that my sole
worldly wealth at the moment consisted of exactly three pennies. All the
same I was right about it. Driftwood doesn't get the dry rot, nor does
it come ashore covered with rich black loam.

"Somebody's planted it here," was my next thought, and my mind strayed
to the panting bulk of a man who was thundering down on top of me.

"It's his, I suppose," I said, and looked up at him. At that precise
instant he tripped and fell full length on the sand. I've seen a good
many lucky escapes in my day--a man who has travelled the out-of-the-way
places of the world from the Yukon an