Without pausing for further thought, and without feeling now the loathsome nature of the task, he quickly stripped the pea-jacket and rough vest from the dead form, and trembling with excitement now in place of fear, tore off his own upper garments, pausing for a few moments to take out pocket-book and case and cigars, but only to empty out the latter, thrust the book and case back, and at the end of a few minutes he was standing in shirt and trousers, the rough jacket and vest lying on the sands, and the form of the drowned sailor tightly buttoned in the dry garments just put on. Harry stood trembling for a few minutes, shrinking from achieving his task. Then with the full knowledge that the body if borne out of the cave would be swept here and there by the current, perhaps for days, and finally cast ashore not many miles away, he softly waded into the water, drew the waif of the sea along after him, right away to the mouth of the cave, where he cautiously peered out, and made well sure that no fishermen were in sight before swimming with his ghastly burden along the zigzag channel, out beyond the rocks, where, after a final thrust, he saw the current bear it slowly away before he returned shuddering into the cave, and then landed on the dry sand to crawl up and crouch there. "They think me dead," he said in a husky whisper; "let them find that, and be sure." He was silent for a time, and then as the thoughts of the past flooded his soul, he burst into a wild fit of sobbing. "Home--sister--Madelaine," he moaned, "gone, gone for ever! Better that I had died; better that I was dead!" But the horror was no longer there, and in a short time he roused up from his prostrate condition half wild and faint with hunger. After a few minutes' search he found a couple of his cigars lying where he had thrown them on the sand, and lighting one, he tried to dull the agony of famine by smoking hard. The effect was little, and he rose from where he was seated and began to feel about the shelves of the rock for limpets, a few of which he scraped from their conical shells and ate with disgust; but they did something towards alleviating his hunger, and seemed to drive away the strange, half-delirious feeling which came over him from time to time, making him look wildly round and wonder whether this was all some dreadful dream. About mid-day he heard voices and the beating of oars, when, wading towards the opening, he stood listening, and was not long in convincing himself that the party was in search of him, while a word or two that he heard spoken made him think that the party must have picked up the body of the drowned sailor. The voices and the sound of the oars died away, and in the midst of the deep silence he crept nearer and peered out to be aware that a couple of boats were passing about a quarter of a mile out, while from their hailing some one, it seemed that a third boat, invisible to the fugitive, was coming along nearer in.