Yet he did not die. Smallpox
laid its hideous clutches upon him; leaving him unspeakably branded
with its repulsive marks. Between it and the attentions of the
tribe the countenance of Alexis Paulvitch was so altered that his
own mother could not have recognized in the pitiful mask he called
his face a single familiar feature. A few scraggly, yellow-white
locks had supplanted the thick, dark hair that had covered his
head. His limbs were bent and twisted, he walked with a shuffling,
unsteady gait, his body doubled forward. His teeth were gone--knocked
out by his savage masters. Even his mentality was but a sorry
mockery of what it once had been.
They took him aboard the Marjorie W., and there they fed and nursed
him. He gained a little in strength; but his appearance never
altered for the better--a human derelict, battered and wrecked,
they had found him; a human derelict, battered and wrecked, he
would remain until death claimed him. Though still in his thirties,
Alexis Paulvitch could easily have passed for eighty. Inscrutable
Nature had demanded of the accomplice a greater penalty than his
principal had paid.
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