It was a huge disfigurement composed of bold lines and angles which stood out in black projection against the white skin. Even in the dim light, Captain O’Shea could discern that these rude markings had been done with a purpose, that they composed themselves into a symbol of some sort. They looked as if they had been laid on with a brush, in broad, sweeping strokes which ran the width of the back, and all the way down to the waist. The man could not have made them himself. They were mysterious, sinister. O’Shea was neither timid nor apt to be caught off his guard, but his pulse fluttered and his mouth felt dry. He was in the presence of something wholly beyond his ken, baffling his experience. This red-haired derelict, whose wits had forsaken him, brought a message hostile, alien, and remote. Presently O’Shea bethought himself of the lantern and made for it with nervous haste. Holding it close to the back of the sleeping man, he stared with horrified attention and pitying wrath that a human being should have been so maltreated. The great symbol or design had been slashed in the flesh with strokes of a sword or knife. The edges of the scars stood out in rough ridges. Into the wounds had been rubbed India-ink or some like substance which the process of healing held indelibly fixed. The pattern thus made permanent and conspicuous was that of a character of the Chinese or Japanese language. Johnny Kent came out of the kitchen and beckoned him. The engineer stood open-mouthed and gazed down at the tremendous ideograph that had been so brutally hacked in human flesh. O’Shea had nothing to say. What was there to say? The thing was there. It spoke for itself. What it meant was an enigma which neither man could in the smallest degree attempt to unravel. When Johnny Kent spoke it was only to voice the obvious fact or two that required no explanation. “He was chopped and branded proper, wasn’t he, Cap’n Mike? And it was done for some devilish purpose. I’ve knocked about most of the ports in the Orient, but I never heard of anything like this.” “They made a document of him, Johnny. ’Tis Chinese workmanship, I’m thinking. How could a man live through a thing like that? For the love of heaven, look at those scars! They are as wide as me thumb, and some of them are better than a foot long. And they stand out so black and wicked that it gives me the creeps.” “It means something, Cap’n Mike. And it’s up to us to find the answer. One of them Chinese characters may tell a whole lot. Their heathen fashion of slingin’ a pen is more like drawin’ pictures. A few lines and a couple of wriggles all bunched up together and it tells the story.” “And what is this story, Johnny? Answer me that.” “You can search me. It’s almighty queer business to happen on my peaceful farm in the State o’ Maine.” “Let the poor beggar rest here till morning and then we will consider him some more. I guess we don’t want to turn him over to the constable, Johnny.”