ther flight. Not daring to wade upright, on account
of the noise made by floundering and by the suck of the mud, I
remained lying down in the mud and propelled myself over its surface
by means of my hands. Still keeping the trail made by the Chinese in
going from and to the junk, I held on until I had reached the water.
Into this I waded to a depth of three feet, and then I turned off to
the side on a line parallel with the beach.

The thought came to me of going toward Yellow Handkerchief's skiff and
escaping in it, but at that very moment he returned to the beach, and,
as though fearing the very thing I had in mind, he slushed out through
the mud to assure himself that the skiff was safe. This turned me in
the opposite direction. Half swimming, half wading, with my head just
out of water and avoiding splashing. I succeeded in putting about a
hundred feet between myself and the spot ashore where the Chinese had
begun to wade ashore from the junk. I drew myself out on the mud and
remained lying flat.

Again Yellow Handkerchief returned to the beach and made a search of
the island, and again he returned to the heap of clam-shells. I knew
what was running in his mind as well as he did himself. No one could
leave or land without making tracks in the mud. The only tracks to be
seen were those leading from his skiff and from where the junk had
been. I was not on the island. I must have left it by one or other of
those two tracks. He had just been over the one to his skiff, and was
certain I had not left that way. Therefore I could have left the
island only by going over the tracks of the junk landing. This he
proceeded to verify by wading out over them himself, lighting matches
as he came along.

When he arrived at the point where I had first lain, I knew, by the
matches he burned and the time he took, that he had discovered the
marks left by my body. These he followed straight to the water and
into it, but in three feet of water he could no longer see them. On
the other hand, as the tide was still falling, he could easily make
out the impression made by the junk's bow, and could have likewise
made out the impression of any other boat if it had landed at that
particular spot. But there was no such mark; and I knew that he was
absolutely convinced that I was hiding somewhere in the mud.

But to hunt on a dark night for a boy in a sea of mud would be like
hunting for a needle in a haystack, and he did not attempt it. Inste