y in thousands; perhaps in hundreds of
thousands--who could tell?--and that in the number, that one death could
not possibly make any difference; couldn't have any importance, at least
to a thinking creature. He, Kayerts, was a thinking creature. He had
been all his life, till that moment, a believer in a lot of nonsense
like the rest of mankind--who are fools; but now he thought! He knew! He
was at peace; he was familiar with the highest wisdom! Then he tried to
imagine himself dead, and Carlier sitting in his chair watching him; and
his attempt met with such unexpected success, that in a very few
moments he became not at all sure who was dead and who was alive. This
extraordinary achievement of his fancy startled him, however, and by
a clever and timely effort of mind he saved himself just in time from
becoming Carlier. His heart thumped, and he felt hot all over at the
thought of that danger. Carlier! What a beastly thing! To compose his
now disturbed nerves--and no wonder!--he tried to whistle a little.
Then, suddenly, he fell asleep, or thought he had slept; but at any rate
there was a fog, and somebody had whistled in the fog.

He stood up. The day had come, and a heavy mist had descended upon the
land: the mist penetrating, enveloping, and silent; the morning mist
of tropical lands; the mist that clings and kills; the mist white and
deadly, immaculate and poisonous. He stood up, saw the body, and threw
his arms above his head with a cry like that of a man who, waking from a
trance, finds himself immured forever in a tomb. "Help! . . . . My God!"

A shriek inhuman, vibrating and sudden, pierced like a sharp dart the
white shroud of that land of sorrow. Three short, impatient screeches
followed, and then, for a time, the fog-wreaths rolled on, undisturbed,
through a formidable silence. Then many more shrieks, rapid and
piercing, like the yells of some exasperated and ruthless creature, rent
the air. Progress was calling to Kayerts from the river. Progress
and civilization and all the virtues. Society was calling to its
accomplished child to come, to be taken care of, to be instructed, to
be judged, to be condemned; it called him to return to that rubbish heap
from which he had wandered away, so that justice could be done.

Kayerts heard and understood. He stumbled out of the verandah, leaving
the other man quite alone for the first time since they had been thrown
there together. He groped his way through the fog,