He felt hands moving about him. Then that he was held back against something cold, then that he was being bound, gently, smoothly; the bands did not hurt his flesh. There was a pause. He still kept his eyes closed. Was this death then? The sun beat upon his body warm and strong. The cool of the pillar to which he was bound was pleasant against his back. There were boards beneath his feet, and on their dry, friendly surface his toes curled. A delicious soft lethargy wrapped him round. Was this death? One sharp pang like the pressure of an aching tooth and then nothing. Sinking into dark silence through this shaft of deep and burning sunlight. . . . He opened his eyes. He cried aloud with astonishment. He was in what was plainly the top room of the Tower, a high white place with a round ceiling softly primrose. One high window went the length from floor to ceiling, and this window, which was without bars, blazed with sun and shone with the colours of the early morning blue. The room was white--pure virgin white--round, and bare of furniture. Only--and this was what had caught the cry from Harkness--three pillars supported the ceiling, and to these three pillars were bound by white cord, first himself, then Dunbar, then, naked as they, Jabez. The fisherman stood there facing Harkness--a gigantic figure. Yesterday afternoon on the hill, last night in the garden Harkness had not recognised the man's huge proportions under his clothes. Now, bound there, with his black hair and beard, his great chest, the muscle of his arms and thighs, the sunlight bathing him, he was mighty to see. His eyes were mild and puzzled like the eyes of a dog who has been chained against reason. He was making a strange restless motion from side to side as though he were testing the white cords that held him. His face above his beard, his neck, the upper part of his chest, his hands, his legs beneath the knees, were a deep russet brown, the rest of him a fair white, striking strangely with the jet blackness of his hair. He smiled as he saw Harkness's astonishment. "Aye, sir," he said. "It wasn't me you was expectin' to see here, and it wasn't myself that was expectin' to be here neither." They were alone--no Japanese, no Crispin. "I've been in here half an hour before you come," he went on. "And I can tell you, sir, I was mighty sorry to see them bringin' both you gentlemen in. Whatever happens to me, I said, they've got clear away. It never kind of struck me that the fog was going to worry you." "Why didn't you get away yourself, Jabez?" Harkness asked him.