the bundle in
my right hand, began softly and carefully to ascend the rock.
I gained the first ledge; crept out along it as far as the ring
mentioned on the clasp, and then began to climb again. This needed
care, for the ascent on the north side was harder at first than on
the other, and I could use but one hand with ease. Slowly, however,
and with effort I pulled myself up and then stole out towards the
face until I could command a view of Polkimbra Beach. Still I could
see nobody, only the lights of the little church-town twinkling
across the beach and, far beyond, the shadowy cliffs of Kynance.
I pulled out my watch. It was close on half-past eleven, the hour of
dead low water.

As I looked up again I thought I saw a speck approaching over the
sands. Yes, I was not mistaken. I set my teeth and crouched down
nearer to the rock. Over the sands, beneath the shadow of the cliffs
he came, and as he drew nearer, I saw that he carried something on
his shoulder, doubtless the spade and pickaxe. A moment more and he
turned to see that no one was following. As he did so, the moon
shone full in his face, and I saw, stripped now of all disguises, the
features of my enemy.

I opened the tin box and took out my knife. I had caused the thin
sharp blade, found in my dead father's heart, to be fitted to a horn
handle into which it shut with an ordinary spring-clasp. As I opened
it, the moonlight glittered down the steel and lit up the letters
"Ricordati."

Still in the shadow, he crept down by the rock, and once more looked
about him. No single soul was abroad at that hour to see; none but
the witness crouching there above. I gripped the knife tighter as he
disappeared beneath the ledge on which I hung.

A low curse or two, and then silence. I held my breath and waited.
Presently he reappeared, with compass in one hand and measuring-tape
in the other, and stood there for a moment looking about him.
Still I waited.

About forty feet from the breakers now crisply splashing on the sand,
Dead Man's Rock suddenly ended on the southern side in a thin black
ridge that broke off with a drop of some ten feet. This ridge was,
of course, covered at high water, and upon it the _Belle Fortune_ had
doubtless struck before she reeled back and settled in deep water.
This was the "south point" mentioned on the clasp. Fixing his
compass carefully, he drew out the tape, and slowly began to measure
towards the north-west. "End