- The next day, the narrator is woken up by the sound of a boat approaching. She's afraid, lamenting, "They'll mistake me for a human being, a naked woman wrapped in a blanket: possibly that's what they've come here for, if it's running around loose, ownerless, why not take it. They won't be able to tell what I really am. But if they guess my true form, identity, they will shoot me or bludgeon in my skill and hang me up by the feet from a tree" (25.3). So, she hides and watches them.
- She sees four or five people arrive. She thinks she spots Joe, but she's not sure she would recognize him at this point.
- While hiding and watching, she starts laughing audibly at them, which sends the visitors in her direction. She wonders who they are, in her mind throwing out the names David, Joe, Claude, Evans, and Malmstrom. Whoever they are, she runs away from them and waits until they leave to return to the cabin.
- When she gets there, she sees someone she thinks is her father standing there. She approaches and says "Father," but when he turns around, it seems (to her) that she's mistaken: "He turns towards me and it's not my father. It is what my father saw, the thing you meet when you've stayed here too long alone" (25.20).
- She comes to the conclusion that while this vision isn't her father, it is what he has become. So she knows that he's dead.