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 blown
against it by the wind, perhaps.”

“Ah,” said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, “you can explain
everything.”

“The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the
bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled,” I called out
after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything
he showed me. “I see,” he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before
disappearing among the willow bushes. Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think
my first thoughts took the form of “One of us must have done this
thing, and it certainly was not I.” But my second thought decided how
impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either
of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen
similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a
suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed
the explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature
had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes. Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear
actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the
clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his
_mind_—that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he
did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto
unmentionable events—waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected,
and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind
intuitively—I hardly knew how. I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the
measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows
formed in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and
of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large
bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters,
just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite
inexplicable; and, after all, it _was_ conceivable that a sharp point
had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did
not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that
diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my “reason.” An
explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some
working explanation of the universe is necessary—however absurd—to the
happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and
face the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact
parallel. I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at
the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could
not be safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention
casually to the hollows in the sand. “Yes,” he said, “I know. They’re all over the island. But _you_ can
explain them, no doubt!”

“Wind, of course,” I answered without hesitation. “Have you never
watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl
everything into a circle? This sand’s loose enough to yield, that’s
all.”

He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him
surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He
seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could
not hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he
kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky,
and out across the water where it was visible through the openings
among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held
it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it,
and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe
with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his
absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he
would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had
noticed _that_, my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient
explanation of it. At length, after a long pause, he began to talk. “Queer thing,” he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted
to say something and get it over. “Queer thing. I mean, about that
otter last night.”

I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with
surprise, and I looked up sharply. “Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things—”

“I don’t mean that, of course,” he interrupted. “I mean—do you
think—did you think it really was an otter?”

“What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?”

“You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed—so _much_
bigger than an otter.”

“The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something,” I
replied. He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with
other thoughts. “It had such extraordinary yellow eyes,” he went on half to himself. “That was the sun too,” I laughed, a trifle boisterously. “I suppose
you’ll wonder next if that fellow in the boat—”

I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again
of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the
expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went
on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished
sentence. Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the
canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave. “I _did_ rather wonder, if you want to know,” he said slowly, “what
that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not
a man. The whole business seemed to rise quite suddenly out of the
water.”

I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was
impatience, and a strain of anger too, in my feeling. “Look here now,” I cried, “this place is quite queer enough without
going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat,
and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going
down-stream as fast as they could lick. And that otter _was_ an otter,
so don’t let’s play the fool about it!”

He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in
the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.