le would cost
from two to three hours' hard walking, and my design was merely to
con the prospect for sign of those inhabitants to whom the dog must
belong. For he was little more than a puppy in age. Also, though
lean, he was not at all emaciated: but the traces of rabbit-dung on
the slopes told that a deserted dog might manage to sustain life
here. Also it promised that the island was inhabited, and by white
men, for rabbits are not indigenous anywhere in the South Pacific.
They must be brought.

"I studied the hollow and searched it with my binoculars for some
while: but without picking up any trace of mankind. Far below me a
sizable stream here showed itself through the tropical vegetation as
it hurried down to a hidden cove. The wide ocean spread southward to
my right. Of how far the island might stretch beyond the taller and
more distant cone I could make no guess.

"A desire for sleep came upon me, and I stretched myself in the shade
of a bush under the lee of the ridge. After an hour's nap I rose and
descended again to the beach.

"Farrell sat by the fire, cooking breakfast, the dog watching him.
There was no coffin, nor any sign of a grave, and the tide was
making. He had made haste to bury Santa during my absence. . . .
He said not a word about it, and I did not question him. But he had
played me this trick. Henceforth I felt no further pity."

"You may remember my saying, Roddy, when I first started to tell you
about Santa, that it was impossible for me to hate Farrell worse than
I did. Well, I thought so at the time. But now on the island I was
to find myself mistaken, and this trick of his set me off hating him
in a new and quite different way.

"I believe now, looking back, that this was the real beginning of
Santa's revenge; or the first evident sign of its working; unless you
count the behaviour of the dog--of which I will say more presently.
At any rate I had no longer that cool godlike sense of mastery over
the man which had sustained me in the boat. It may sound incredible:
but whereas, cooped in that narrow shell of boards, I had found his
presence gratifying, here on an island of wide prospects, where we
could have parcelled out a kingdom apiece and lived by the year
without sight of one another, I found it irritating and at times even
intolerably so. He had found power, through her dead body, to give
me a grievance against him, when I had supposed him too low and
myself too h