It was a long time before he recovered himself, and set to work
mechanically to bury the crossbow, hunter's hides, tools, and
manuscripts, under a heap of pebbles. As the cliff, though low, was
perpendicular, he could not scale it, else he would have preferred to
conceal them in the woods above. To pile pebbles over them was the best
he could do for the present; he intended to return for them when he
discovered a path up the cliff. He then started, taking only his bow and
arrows.

But no such path was to be found; he walked on and on till weary, and
still the cliff ran like a wall on his left hand. After an hour's rest,
he started again; and, as the sun was declining, came suddenly to a gap
in the cliff, where a grassy sward came down to the shore. It was now
too late, and he was too weary, to think of returning for his things
that evening. He made a scanty meal, and endeavoured to rest. But the
excitement of losing the canoe, the long march since, the lack of good
food, all tended to render him restless. Weary, he could not rest, nor
move farther. The time passed slowly, the sun sank, the wind ceased;
after an interminable time the stars appeared, and still he could not
sleep. He had chosen a spot under an oak on the green slope. The night
was warm, and even sultry, so that he did not miss his covering, but
there was no rest in him. Towards the dawn, which comes very early at
that season, he at last slept, with his back to the tree. He awoke with
a start in broad daylight, to see a man standing in front of him armed
with a long spear.

Felix sprang to his feet, instinctively feeling for his hunting-knife;
but he saw in an instant that no injury was meant, for the man was
leaning on the shaft of his weapon, and, of course, could, if so he had
wished, have run him through while sleeping. They looked at each other
for a moment. The stranger was clad in a tunic, and wore a hat of
plaited straw. He was very tall and strongly built; his single weapon, a
spear of twice his own length. His beard came down on his chest. He
spoke to Felix in a dialect the latter did not understand. Felix held
out his hand as a token of amity, which the other took. He spoke again.
Felix, on his part, tried to explain his shipwreck, when a word the
stranger uttered recalled to Felix's memory the peculiar dialect used by
the shepherd race on the hills in the neighbourhood of his home.

He spoke in this dialect, which the stranger in part at leas