it! For, in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he
at least would have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his
own species. Here his companions were owls, water-snakes, and
sleeping buzzards.

I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely
surrounded by alligators."

And then he found he was not alone.

In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from
him there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went
out and the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at
some height above the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher
even than that of the embankment. It was as though the man had
been sitting on the limb of a tree. David crossed the tracks and
found that on the side of the embankment opposite the shed there
was solid ground and what once had been a wharf. He advanced over
this cautiously, and as he did so the clouds disappeared, and in
the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening into a
river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf an
ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting
his pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm
engine-room and the company of his fellow creatures, David's
heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then
something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious,
secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed from
her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty.
But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her
funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood