upon the dark face, bronzed and hardened by
climate and toil, the sleeper's lips are moving, and a peculiarly soft
and wistful expression seems to rest upon the firm features. Then his
eyes open wide. For a moment he lies, staring up at the green fronds
which afford shade no longer, then starts up into a sitting posture. And
simultaneous with the movement here and there a faint circular ripple
widens on the slimy surface of the lagoon, as each of those dark specks,
representing the snout of a basking crocodile, vanishes.

Laurence Stanninghame's outward aspect has undergone some change since
last we beheld it, now more than two years ago. The expression of the
dark, firm face, burned and bronzed by an equatorial sun, heavily
bearded too, has become hard and ruthless, and there is a quick
alertness in the penetrating glance of the clear eyes which tells of an
ever-present familiarity with peril. Even the movement of sitting up, of
suddenly awakening from sleep, yet being wide awake in a moment,
contains unconsciously more than a suggestion of this.

A rapid, careful look on all sides. Nothing is stirring in the sultry,
penetrating heat; the palmetto thatch of clustering huts away beyond the
opposite bank might contain no life for all of it they show. Hardly a
bird twittering in the reeds but does so half heartedly. The man's face
softens again, taking on the expression it wore while he slept.

While he slept! Why could he not have slept on forever, he thought, his
whole being athrill with the memory revived by his dreams? For his
dreams had been sweet--wildly, entrancingly sweet. Seldom, indeed, were
such vouchsafed to him; but when they were their effect would last,
would last vividly. He would treasure up their recollection, would go
back upon it.

Now, slumbering there in the torrid heat, by the reed-fringed,
crocodile-haunted lagoon, his dreams had wafted him into a more than
Paradise. Eyes, starry with a radiant love-light, had laughed into his;
around his neck the twining of arms, and the soft, caressing touch of
soothing hands upon his life-weary head; the whisper of love-tones,
deep, burning, tremulous, into his ear. And from this he had awakened,
had awakened to the reality--to the weird and depressing surroundings of
human life in its most cruel and debased form; to the recollection of
scenes of recurring and hideous peril, of pitiless atrocity, which
seemed to render the burning, brassy glare even as the gl