suddenly, an astonishing sight held him motionless. Was it
possible? He hesitated to believe it, so incredible did the reality
seem to him. But how could he doubt the evidence of his eyes?

He stooped forward. Yes, it was really that: there were footprints!
The ground was marked with footprints, the prints of two bare feet,
very plainly defined and apparently quite recent.

And immediately his stupefaction made way for a great joy, aroused by
the sudden and clear conception of a most undeniable fact: the new
land was indeed connected, as he had supposed, with some point on the
northern coast of France; and from this point, which could not be very
remote, in view of the distance which he himself had covered, one of
his fellow-creatures had come thus far.

Delighted to feel that there was human life near at hand, he
recollected the incident where Robinson Crusoe discovers the imprint
of a naked foot on the sand of his desert island:

"It's Man Friday's footprint!" he said, laughing. "There is a Friday,
too, in this land of mine! Let's see if we can find him!"

At the point where he had crossed the trail, it branched off to the
left and approached the sea. Simon was feeling surprised at not
meeting or catching sight of any one, when he discovered that the
author of the footprints, after going round a shapeless wreck, had
turned and was therefore walking in the same direction as himself.

After twenty minutes, the trail, intersected by a gully which ran
across it, escaped him for a time. He found it again and followed it,
skirting the base of a chain of rather high sand-hills, which ended
suddenly in a sort of craggy cliff.

On rounding this cliff Simon started back. On the ground, flat on its
face, with the arms at right angles to the body, lay the corpse of a
man, curiously dressed in a very short, yellow leather waistcoat and a
pair of trousers, likewise leather, the ends of which were bell-shaped
and slit in the Mexican fashion. In the middle of his back was the
hilt of a dagger which had been driven between the shoulder-blades.

What astonished Simon when he had turned the body over was that the
face was brick-red, with prominent cheek-bones and long, black hair:
it was the undoubted face of a Redskin. Blood trickled from the mouth,
which was distorted by a hideous grin. The eyes were wide open, and
showed only their whites. The contracted fingers had gripped the sand
like claws. The body was still warm.

"It