e looked all of us, and it was easy to see that it had been
disturbed, and so we ran hastily to it, knowing not what to fear; thus
we found it to be empty; for the monsters had digged down to the poor
lad's body, and of it we could discover no sign. Upon this, we came to a
greater horror of the weed men than ever; for we knew them now to be foul
ghouls who could not let even the dead body rest in the grave.

Now after this, the bo'sun led us all back to the hill-top, and there he
looked to our hurts; for one man had lost two fingers in the night's
fray; another had been bitten savagely in the left arm; whilst a third
had all the skin of his face raised in wheals where one of the brutes had
fixed its tentacles. And all of these had received but scant attention,
because of the stress of the fight, and, after that, through the
discovery that Tompkins was missing. Now, however, the bo'sun set-to upon
them, washing and binding them up, and for dressings he made use of some
of the oakum which we had with us, binding this on with strips torn from
the roll of spare duck, which had been in the locker of the boat.

For my part, seizing this chance to make some examination of my
wounded toe, the which, indeed, was causing me to limp, I found that I
had endured less harm than seemed to me; for the bone of the toe was
untouched, though showing bare; yet when it was cleansed, I had not
overmuch pain with it; though I could not suffer to have the boot on,
and so bound some canvas about my foot, until such time as it should
be healed.

Presently, when our wounds were all attended to, the which had taken
time, for there was none of us altogether untouched, the bo'sun bade the
man whose fingers were damaged, to lie down in the tent, and the same
order he gave also to him that was bitten in the arm. Then, the rest of
us he directed to go down with him and carry up fuel; for that the night
had shown him how our very lives depended upon a sufficiency of this;
and so all that morning we brought fuel to the hill-top, both weed and
reeds, resting not until midday, when he gave us a further tot of the
rum, and after that set one of the men upon the dinner. Then he bade the
man, Jessop by name, who had proposed to fly a kite over the vessel in
the weed, to say whether he had any craft in the making of such a
matter. At that, the fellow laughed, and told the bo'sun that he would
make him a kite that would fly very steadily and strongly, and this