if I had been shot.

At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud
sound of humming--the sound of several hummings--which passed with a vast
commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared upwards
into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the
distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some living yet
invisible creatures at work.

My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either of
us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw that a
movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it became
released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had turned
completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It lay on the
edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept away.

The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch
about a "proper burial"--and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the
sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.

I saw what he had seen.

For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed
chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh
were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar
in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the
island.

"Their mark!" I heard my companion mutter under his breath. "Their awful
mark!"

And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the
current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream
and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and
over on the waves like an otter.

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