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markings.
    "We'd better get off sharp in an hour," I said presently, feeling for an
opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any rate.
And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: "Rather! If they'll let us."
    "Who'll let us? The elements?" I asked quickly, with affected indifference.
    "The powers of this awful place, whoever they are," he replied, keeping his
eyes on the map. "The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the
world."
    "The elements are always the true immortals," I replied, laughing as
naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected
my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the
smoke:
    "We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster."
    This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point
of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to
extract the tooth; it had to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was
all pretence.
    "Further disaster! Why, what's happened?"
    "For one thing—the steering paddle's gone," he said quietly.
    "The steering paddle gone!" I repeated, greatly excited, for this was our
rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. "But what—"
    "And there's a tear in the bottom of the canoe," he added, with a genuine
little tremor in his voice.
    I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face
somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning
sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to
follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards
the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still
lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles,
or rather, the paddle, on the sand beside her.
    "There's only one," he said, stooping to pick it up. "And here's the rent
in the base-board."
    It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed two
paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think better of
it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.
    There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a
little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the
tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation
showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without
observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the water would
have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once out in
mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never more than
two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very rapidly.
    "There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice," I heard
him saying, more to himself than to me, "two victims rather," he added as
he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.
    I began to whistle—a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly
nonplussed—and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined
to consider them foolish.
    "It wasn't there last night," he said presently, straightening up from his
examination and looking anywhere but at me.
    "We must have scratched her in landing, of course," I stopped whistling to
say. "The stones are very sharp."
    I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye
squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation was.
There were no stones, to begin with.
    "And then there's this to explain too," he added quietly, handing me the
paddle and pointing to the blade.
    A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and examined
it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though
someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that the first
vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.
    "One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing," I said feebly, "or—or
it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles