I stood with Cavor’s cap in my hand, staring at the trampled reeds and thorns about me. On some of them were little smears of something dark, something that I dared not touch. A dozen yards away, perhaps, the rising breeze dragged something into view, something small and vividly white.

It was a little piece of paper crumpled tightly, as though it had been clutched tightly. I picked it up, and on it were smears of red. My eye caught faint pencil marks. I smoothed it out, and saw uneven and broken writing ending at last in a crooked streak upon the paper.

I set myself to decipher this.

“I have been injured about the knee, I think my kneecap is hurt, and I cannot run or crawl,” it began⁠—pretty distinctly written.

Then less legibly: “They have been chasing me for some time, and it is only a question of”⁠—the word “time” seemed to have been written here and erased in favour of something illegible⁠—“before they get me. They are beating all about me.”