When he reached the lagoon he halted suddenly. Something startled him.
He was quite certain that he had counted fourteen corpses. Now there
were only twelve. The two Lascars' bodies, which rested on the small
group of rocks on the verge of the lagoon, had vanished.

Where had they gone to?




CHAPTER III

DISCOVERIES


The sailor wasted no time in idle bewilderment. He searched carefully
for traces of the missing Lascars. He came to the conclusion that the
bodies had been dragged from off the sun-dried rocks into the lagoon by
some agency the nature of which he could not even conjecture.

They were lying many feet above the sea-level when he last saw them,
little more than half an hour earlier. At that point the beach shelved
rapidly. He could look far into the depths of the rapidly clearing
water. Nothing was visible there save several varieties of small fish.

The incident puzzled and annoyed him. Still thinking about it, he sat
down on the highest rock and pulled off his heavy boots to empty the
water out. He also divested himself of his stockings and spread them
out to dry.