om the yawl as we did. Don't be
upset--there isn't a man alive on that thing!"

"Baxter?" she exclaimed.

"I said--not one!" I answered. "Wholesale! Don't think about it--as
for me, I wish I'd never seen it. But now it's a question of a living
man--Wing."

"Then it was as I thought?" she asked. "Wing was there?"

"Lorrimore is sure of it--he found a cap of Wing's in the galley,"
said I. "And as Wing isn't amongst the dead, he's the man who
escaped."

Scarterfield came up, the local policeman with him who had joined Mr.
Raven's search-party as it came across country.

"Whereabouts did this man land, Middlebrook?" he asked. "You saw him,
you and Miss Raven, didn't you?"

"We saw him round these rocks," I replied. "But then they hid him from
us--we couldn't see exactly. Somewhere on the other side of them,
anyway."

We spread ourselves out along the shore, crossing the spit of sand,
now encroached on considerably by the tide, and began to search
amongst the black rocks that jutted out of it thereabouts. Presently
we came across the boat, slightly rocking in the lapping water
alongside a ledge--I took a hasty glance into it and drew Miss Raven
away. For on the thwarts, and on the seat in the stern, and on one of
the oars, thrown carelessly aside, there was blood.

A sharp cry from one of the men who had gone a little ahead brought us
all hurrying to his side. He had found, amongst the rocks, a sort of
pool at the sides of which there was dry, sand-strewn rock; there were
marks there as if a man had knelt in the sand, and there was more
blood, and there were strips of clothing--linen, silk, as if the man
had torn up some of his garments as temporary bandages.

"He's been here," said Lorrimore in a low voice. "Probably washed his
wounds here--salt is a styptic. Flesh wounds, most likely, but," he
added, sinking his voice still lower, "judging from what we've seen of
the blood he's lost, he must have been weakening by the time he got
here. Still, he's a man of vast strength and physique, and--he'd push
on. Look for marks of his footsteps."

We eventually picked up a recently made track in the sand and followed
it until it came to a point at the end of the overhanging woods, where
they merged into open moorland running steeply downwards to the beach.
There, in the short, wiry grass of the close-knitted turf, the marks
vanished.

"Just as I said," muttered Lorrimore, whom with Miss Raven and myself, was
striding