I returned alone to the stockade, and for a long time after that kept the fire blazing, and sat up smoking and thinking.  I hardly knew why; but sleep was far from me for one thing, and for another, an idea was taking form in my mind that required the comfort of tobacco and a bright fire for its growth.  I lay against a corner of the stockade seat, listening to the wind whispering and to the ceaseless drip-drip of the trees.  The night, otherwise, was very still, and the sea quiet as a lake.  I remember that I was conscious, peculiarly conscious, of this host of desolate islands crowding about us in the darkness, and that we were the one little spot of humanity in a rather wonderful kind of wilderness.

But this, I think, was the only symptom that came to warn me of highly strung nerves, and it certainly was not sufficiently alarming to destroy my peace of mind.  One thing, however, did come to disturb my peace, for just as I finally made ready to go, and had kicked the embers of the fire into a last effort, I fancied I saw, peering at me round the farther end of the stockade wall, a dark and shadowy mass that might have been—­that strongly resembled, in fact—­the body of a large animal.  Two glowing eyes shone for an instant in the middle of it.  But the next second I saw that it was merely a projecting mass of moss and lichen in the wall of our stockade, and the eyes were a couple of wandering sparks from the dying ashes I had kicked.  It was easy enough, too, to imagine I saw an animal moving here and there between the trees, as I picked my way stealthily to my tent.  Of course, the shadows tricked me.

And though it was after one o’clock, Maloney’s light was still burning, for I saw his tent shining white among the pines.

It was, however, in the short space between consciousness and sleep—­that time when the body is low and the voices of the submerged region tell sometimes true—­that the idea which had been all this while maturing reached the point of an actual decision, and I suddenly realised that I had resolved to send word to Dr. Silence.  For, with a sudden wonder that I had hitherto been so blind, the unwelcome conviction dawned upon me all at once that some dreadful thing was lurking about us on this island, and that the safety of at least one of us was threatened by something monstrous and unclean that was too horrible to contemplate.  And, again remembering those last words of his as the train moved out of the platform, I understood that Dr. Silence would hold himself in readiness to come.

“Unless you should send for me sooner,” he had said.

* * * * *

I found myself suddenly wide awake.  It is impossible to say what woke me, but it was no gradual process, seeing that I jumped from deep sleep to absolute alertness in a single instant.  I had evidently slept for an hour and more, for the night had cleared, stars crowded the sky, and a pallid half-moon just sinking into the sea threw a spectral light between the trees.