"Wot the 'ell?" ejaculated one of the crew.

"A white man!" muttered the mate, and then: "Man the oars, boys,
and we'll just pull over an' see what he wants."

When they came close to the shore they saw an emaciated creature
with scant white locks tangled and matted. The thin, bent body
was naked but for a loin cloth. Tears were rolling down the sunken
pock-marked cheeks. The man jabbered at them in a strange tongue.

"Rooshun," hazarded the mate. "Savvy English?" he called to the
man.

He did, and in that tongue, brokenly and haltingly, as though it
had been many years since he had used it, he begged them to take him
with them away from this awful country. Once on board the Marjorie
W. the stranger told his rescuers a pitiful tale of privation,
hardships, and torture, extending over a period of ten years. How
he happened to have come to Africa he did not tell them, leaving
them to assume he had forgotten the incidents of his life prior to
the frightful ordeals that had wrecked him mentally and physically.
He did not even tell them his true name, and so they knew him only
as Michael Sabrov, nor was there any resemblance between this sorry
wreck and the virile, though unprincipled, Alexis Paulvitch of old.

It had been ten years since the Russian had escaped the fate of his
friend, the arch-fiend Rokoff, and not once, but many times during
those ten years had Paulvitch cursed the fate that had given
to Nicholas Rokoff death and immunity from suffering while it had