footprints in the sand to guide a possible pursuit in the morning.
The rising sun found him purposefully splashing on, weary but enheartened by the discovery that he had left behind the more thickly wooded section of the island.
Presently, turning in to the dry beach for the first time, he climbed to the summit of a dune somewhat higher than its fellows, and took observations, finding that he had come near to the eastern extremity of the island.
At some distance to his right a wagon road, faintly rutted in sand and overgrown with beach grass, struck inland.
Following this at a venture, he came, at about eight o'clock, upon the outskirts of a waterside community.
Before proceeding he hid the magazine rifle in a thicket, then made a wide detour, and picked up a roadway which entered the village from the north.
If his disreputable appearance was calculated to excite comment, readiness in disbursing money to remedy such shortcomings made amends for Lanyard's taciturnity. Within two hours, shaved, bathed, and inconspicuously dressed in a cheap suit of ready-made clothing, he was breakfasting famously upon the plain fare of a commercial tavern.
The town, he learned, was the one-time important whaling port of Edgartown. He would be able to leave for the mainland on a ferry steamer sailing early in the afternoon.
Ten minutes before going abroad he filed a long telegram in code addressed to the head of the British Secret Service in New York. …
