sland that winter, but
when a schooner came to take the killers off and collect the skins
Smirnoff was on board of her. That"--and an ominous gleam crept into
Lewson's eyes--"was the real beginning of the trouble."

"He had us hauled up before him--guess the other man had to tell him
who we were--and when I wouldn't answer he slashed me with a
sled-dog-whip across the face."

Lewson clenched a lean brown fist. "Yes," he added, hoarsely, "I was
whipped--but they should have tied my hands first. It was not my fault
I didn't have that man's life. It was most a minute before three of
them pulled me off him, and he was considerably worse to look at then."

There was silence for a minute or two, and Wyllard, who felt his own
face grow a trifle warm, saw the suggestive hardness in Charly's eyes.
Lewson was gazing out into the darkness, but the veins were swollen on
his forehead and his whole body had stiffened. Then he spread his
hands out.

"We'll let that go. I can't think of it. They put us on board the
schooner, and by and bye she ran into a creek on the coast. We were to
be sent somewhere to be dealt with, and we knew what that meant, with
what they had against us. Well, they went ashore to collect some skins
from the Kamtchadales, and at night we cut the boat adrift. We got off
in the darkness, and if they followed they never trailed us. Guess
they figured we couldn't make out through the winter that was coming
on."

So far the story had been more or less connected and comprehensible.
It laid no great tax on Wyllard's credulity, and, indeed, all that
Lewson described had come about very much as Dampier had once or twice
suggested; but it seemed an almost impossible thing that the three men
should have survived during the years that followed. Lewson, as it
happened, never made that matter very clear. He sat silent for almost
a minute before he went on again.

"We hauled the boat out, and hid her among the rocks, and after that we
fell in with some Kamtchadales going north," he said. "They took us
along, I don't know how far, but they were trapping for furs, and by
and bye--I think it was months after--we got away from them. Then we
fell in with another crowd, and went on further north with them. They
were Koriaks, and we lived with them a long while--a winter and a
summer anyway. It was more, perhaps--I can't remember."

He broke off with a vague gesture, and sat looking at the others
vacantly wi