"Hang it! I'm sure this was the place. . . . I remember that sand-hill with its hair all a-bristle."
He poked and searched. He scraped up the sand with his hands in case they should have got buried, but not a rag of his clothes could he find.
Stay! Not a rag? What's that? Away down a gully between two hummocks, as if it had attempted escape on its own account--a blue sock which he recognised as his own.
He pounced on it with a whoop, dusted one foot free of the dry, soft sand, and put the sock on.
"It's a beginning," he said, quaintly enough, "but----!" But obviously more was necessary before he could return home. He searched carefully all round, but could not find another thread. He climbed the sliding side of the nearest sand-hill, and looked cautiously about him. But the whole place was a honeycomb of gullies, and the clothing of a thousand men might have hidden in them and never been seen again.
He sat down in the warm sand and cogitated. He looked at his single towel, and at the wire-grass bristling sparsely through the sand, and wondered if it might be possible to construct a primitive raiment out of such slight materials. But his deep-set eyes never ceased their vigilant outlook.
Something moved behind the rounded shoulder of a hill in front. It might be only the loping brown body of a rabbit, but he was after it like a shot.
When he topped the hill he saw a naked white foot slipping out of sight into a dark hole like a big burrow. He leaped down the hill, and stretched a groping arm into the hole. It lighted on squirming flesh. His hand gripped tightly that which it had caught, and a furious assault of blows, scratches, bites, and the frantic tearings of small fingers strove to loosen it. But he held tight, and inch by inch drew his prisoner out--a small boy with dark hair thick with sand, and dark eyes blazing furiously.
He was stark naked, and held in his hand a small weapon consisting of a round stone with a hole in the centre, into which a wooden handle had been thrust and bound with string. With this, as he lay on his back, now that he had space to use it, he proceeded to lash out vigorously at his captor, who still held on to his ankle in spite of the punishment his wrist and arm were receiving.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" said the young man in the towel, dodging the blows as well as he could. "What in Heaven's name are you? Ancient Briton? Bit of the Stone Age?"