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