ance of that poor drowned man that
turned me cold.

The Swede glanced up sharply at me, and began clambering down the bank.
I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away
much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck and part of the
chest lay bare.

Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand
in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much
momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and
sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled
together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water.
And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily
against the corpse.

The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.

At the moment we touched the body there arose from its surface the loud
sound of humming--the sound of several hummings--which passed with a
vast commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared
upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally
ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some
living yet invisible creatures at work.

My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either
of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw
that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it
became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had
turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It
lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept
away.

The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch
about a "proper burial" and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the
sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an
instant.

I saw what he had seen.

For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed
chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh
were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly
similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over
the island.

"Their mark!" I heard my companion mutter under his breath. "Their awful
mark!"

And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the
current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into
midstream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight,
turning