To keep up the circulation, I ran around the island a dozen times or so, and clambered across its rocky backbone as many times more—­all of which was of greater service to me, as I afterward discovered, than merely to warm me up.  In the midst of this exercise I wondered if I had lost anything out of my pockets while rolling over and over in the sand.  A search showed the absence of my revolver and pocket-knife.  The first Yellow Handkerchief had taken; but the knife had been lost in the sand.

I was hunting for it when the sound of rowlocks came to my ears.  At first, of course, I thought of Charley; but on second thought I knew Charley would be calling out as he rowed along.  A sudden premonition of danger seized me.  The Marin Islands are lonely places; chance visitors in the dead of night are hardly to be expected.  What if it were Yellow Handkerchief?  The sound made by the rowlocks grew more distinct.  I crouched in the sand and listened intently.  The boat, which I judged a small skiff from the quick stroke of the oars, was landing in the mud about fifty yards up the beach.  I heard a raspy, hacking cough, and my heart stood still.  It was Yellow Handkerchief.  Not to be robbed of his revenge by his more cautious companions, he had stolen away from the village and come back alone.

I did some swift thinking.  I was unarmed and helpless on a tiny islet, and a yellow barbarian, whom I had reason to fear, was coming after me.  Any place was safer than the island, and I turned instinctively to the water, or rather to the mud.  As he began to flounder ashore through the mud, I started to flounder out into it, going over the same course which the Chinese had taken in landing me and in returning to the junk.

Yellow Handkerchief, believing me to be lying tightly bound, exercised no care, but came ashore noisily.  This helped me, for, under the shield of his noise and making no more myself than necessary, I managed to cover fifty feet by the time he had made the beach.  Here I lay down in the mud.  It was cold and clammy, and made me shiver, but I did not care to stand up and run the risk of being discovered by his sharp eyes.

He walked down the beach straight to where he had left me lying, and I had a fleeting feeling of regret at not being able to see his surprise when he did not find me.  But it was a very fleeting regret, for my teeth were chattering with the cold.

What his movements were after that I had largely to deduce from the facts of the situation, for I could scarcely see him in the dim starlight.  But I was sure that the first thing he did was to make the circuit of the beach to learn if landings had been made by other boats.  This he would have known at once by the tracks through the mud.

Convinced that no boat had removed me from the island, he next started to find out what had become of me.  Beginning at the pile of clam-shells, he lighted matches to trace my tracks in the sand.  At such times I could see his villainous face plainly, and, when the sulphur from the matches irritated his lungs, between the raspy cough that followed and the clammy mud in which I was lying, I confess I shivered harder than ever.