Siskiyou Pearly’s boat was empty, save for a pair of oars.  Its gunwale rubbed against the bank alongside of O’Brien.  They rolled him over into it.  Mucluc Charley cast off the painter, and Leclaire shoved the boat out into the current.  Then, exhausted by their labours, they lay down on the bank and slept.

Next morning all Red Cow knew of the joke that had been played on Marcus O’Brien.  There were some tall bets as to what would happen to the two perpetrators when the victim arrived back.  In the afternoon a lookout was set, so that they would know when he was sighted.  Everybody wanted to see him come in.  But he didn’t come, though they sat up till midnight.  Nor did he come next day, nor the next.  Red Cow never saw Marcus O’Brien again, and though many conjectures were entertained, no certain clue was ever gained to dispel the mystery of his passing.

* * * * *

Only Marcus O’Brien knew, and he never came back to tell.  He awoke next morning in torment.  His stomach had been calcined by the inordinate quantity of whisky he had drunk, and was a dry and raging furnace.  His head ached all over, inside and out; and, worse than that, was the pain in his face.  For six hours countless thousands of mosquitoes had fed upon him, and their ungrateful poison had swollen his face tremendously.  It was only by a severe exertion of will that he was able to open narrow slits in his face through which he could peer.  He happened to move his hands, and they hurt.  He squinted at them, but failed to recognize them, so puffed were they by the mosquito virus.  He was lost, or rather, his identity was lost to him.  There was nothing familiar about him, which, by association of ideas, would cause to rise in his consciousness the continuity of his existence.  He was divorced utterly from his past, for there was nothing about him to resurrect in his consciousness a memory of that past.  Besides, he was so sick and miserable that he lacked energy and inclination to seek after who and what he was.

It was not until he discovered a crook in a little finger, caused by an unset breakage of years before, that he knew himself to be Marcus O’Brien.  On the instant his past rushed into his consciousness.  When he discovered a blood-blister under a thumb-nail, which he had received the previous week, his self-identification became doubly sure, and he knew that those unfamiliar hands belonged to Marcus O’Brien, or, just as much to the point, that Marcus O’Brien belonged to the hands.  His first thought was that he was ill—­that he had had river fever.  It hurt him so much to open his eyes that he kept them closed.  A small floating branch struck the boat a sharp rap.  He thought it was some one knocking on the cabin door, and said, “Come in.”  He waited for a while, and then said testily, “Stay out, then, damn you.”  But just the same he wished they would come in and tell him about his illness.