If Cochose had glimpsed my features at all during the course of our desperate struggle on the deck of the sloop, the impression made on his mind must have been merely momentary; and, besides, he would never once conceive it possible that the same man could have reached the bark ahead of his return.

At the same instant I experienced a sharp interior revulsion of some sort, most briefly momentary, but of a character that shook me from head to toe.