, and turned in for the night. Not!... I
took to the woods all right, but on my stomach. And I curled up so tight
that my knees touched my chin. Ever try it? It's the nearest thing to
having some one with you, when you're cold and alone. Adam must have
had a hard-shell back and a soft-shell stomach, like an armadillo--how
does it run?--"dillowing in his armor." Because in moments of real or
imaginary danger it's the first instinct of Adam's sons to curl up, and
of Eve's daughters. Ever touch a Straits Settlement Jewess on the back
of the hand with a lighted cigarette?...

As I'm telling you, I curled up good and tight, head and knees on the
grub sack, Colt and dynamite handy, hair standing perfectly straight up,
rope round me on the ground in a circle--I had a damn-fool notion that
It mightn't be allowed to cross knotted ropes, and I shook with chills
and nightmares and cramps. I could only lie on my left side, for the
boils on my right. I couldn't keep my teeth quiet. I couldn't do
anything that a Christian ought to do, with a heathen It-god strolling
around. Yes, ... the thing came out on the beach, in full view of where
I was, but I couldn't see it, because of the pitch dark. It came out,
and made noises with its feet in the sand--up and down--up and
down--scrunch--scrunch--something like a man walking, and not in a
hurry. Something like it, but not exactly. The It's feet (they have
seven toes according to the nigger paddles) didn't touch the ground as
often as a man's would have done in walking the distance. There'd be one
scrunch and then quite a long pause before the next. It sounded like a
very, very big man, taking the very longest steps he could. But there
wasn't any more mouth work. And for that I'm still offering up prayers
of thanksgiving; for, if--say when it was just opposite where I lay, and
not fifty yards off--it had let off anything sudden and loud, I'd have
been killed as dead as by a stroke of lightning.

Well, I was just going to break, when day did. Broke so sweet, and calm,
and pretty; all pink landward over the black jungle, all smooth and
baby-blue out to sea. Till the sun showed, there was a land breeze--not
really a breeze, just a stir, a cool quiet moving of spicy smells from
one place to another--nothing more than that. Then the sea breeze rose
and swept the sky and ocean till they were one and the same blue, the
blue that comes highest at Tiffany's; and little puffs of shore birds
came in