He went with Vytal to the secluded house beyond the enclosure. In the main room they found Marlowe sitting at a table, his arms thrown out over the rough pine top, his head resting on them in an attitude of sleep. A candle, sadly in need of snuffers, flickered across a page of manuscript that lay crumpled in his hands. On hearing Vytal enter, the poet awoke slowly; but, seeing the face behind his friend, as it came within the candle-light, he rose from his chair with an exclamation of surprise. “The sole survivor,” announced Vytal, “of our fifteen men.” “What!” “But a plaything,” added Ralph, with a deprecatory wave of his hand. “A mere babery for naked red-boys.” Marlowe took up the candle and held it nearer the speaker’s face. Then, with less surprise and more commiseration, “Forgive me,” he said, “for my unmannerly welcome, but for the moment your features seemed familiar to me, as though I had seen them in a dream.” The new-comer returned his gaze with a dazed expression. “I _am_ a dream.” The poet glanced at Vytal meaningly. “He needs rest; let him sleep on my bed. I will make a couch of grasses for myself.” When finally they heard the regular breathing of their guest, who lay comfortably on Marlowe’s bed, Vytal told of the meeting on the shore and of Ralph Contempt’s broken narrative. “Poor devil!” mused the poet. “He whose bones we found scattered here was far more fortunate.” “I thought I knew this man’s face,” said Vytal. “’Tis strange that you, too, should have imagined a recognition.” “Nay, it was but the eyes that seemed familiar. Doubtless there are many like them of Saxon blue, blighted by the undue levity of a disordered brain. The fellow, most like, has been a wild thing, little better than a beast. Saw you ever such a growth of hair on head and chin?” “No, it ill becomes the youthful face—the face—” Vytal paused and fell again to thinking. “The face,” echoed Marlowe, looking over to the sleeper. “Perchance we saw it before the man left England, before he came hither a year ago to meet his doom.” “It is probable,” allowed Vytal; “if, indeed, we saw the face at all.” CHAPTER XII “That, like a fox in midst of harvest time, Doth prey upon my flocks of passengers.” —MARLOWE, in _Tamburlaine_. By noon on the following day the whole colony had heard the tale of a desperate fight on this peaceful island, of an unimaginable, living death amid savage captors, and of a miraculous deliverance. “He fought ten, single-handed, and so escaped,” said one of the planters, joining a number of his companions, who were hastening toward Vytal’s house. “He was half roasted,” declared another, shuddering, “and prodded with stones red hot.” “His house,” asserted a third, “was burned to cinders while he defended it within this very clearing.”