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ined silent, and his brow was knitted in deep thought as he turned their cruel situation over and over, yet saw no hope of release for his son save in betraying the secrets of those who employed him, secrets he was in honour bound not to disclose. The sun sank swiftly. Before it had disappeared Jack saw swarms of the dreaded mosquitoes begin to thicken in the air, like flights of gnats on a summer evening in England. The swift tropic dark swept over swamp and hill-side, and almost at once the framework which covered each of the captives was literally hidden with the vast masses of the venomous insects, which knew that a fresh prey awaited them within. It did not need sight to tell the prisoners that an incalculable number of their tiny but deadly enemies awaited the moment when the nets would be drawn aside, the sense of hearing told them only too clearly. The air was filled with a steady hum caused by the beating of myriads upon myriads of tiny wings. Jack shuddered. He had already been bitten severely by mosquitoes when they had invaded a camp in their dozens and scores, and he had been free to defend himself, but what hideous torture would lie in that moment when they would be exposed to the onslaught of these innumerable swarms, and be unable to move a finger to disturb them at their dreadful feast upon the life-blood of their victims. Jack and his father had spent half an hour in silence, when a yellow glow brightened over the swamp, and presently the moon came up and cast a strong light over the scene. Now Jack saw the mosquitoes. They hovered in vast clouds around and above the netting, they hung in huge festoons from every fold, from every corner, from every point of vantage where foothold could be gained. It had seemed incredible to him at first that such tiny creatures could drain the body of a man of every drop of blood, but now that eye and ear together assured him of the vast number of their swarming myriads, he wondered no longer. He was still staring at them when there was a flare on the edge of the slope above. He glanced up and saw a couple of men in the moonlight. They bore burning green branches, and waved them to and fro to keep off the clouds of mosquitoes which danced about them. From the midst of the smoke came a voice. "In ten minutes more the first hour will have gone and the first cord will be pulled." It was the voice of Saya Chone, and he added no word to that brief message. He a
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