trim corvette, with its bright paint, smart
sailors, and Bob Roberts, the merry, cheery young English lad. Then he
thought of the residency, with the sweet graceful ladies, the pleasant
officers, always so frank and hospitable; of Tom Long, whom he liked in
spite of the ensign's pride and stand-offishness; and lastly he asked
himself what they would think of him for not keeping faith with them
about the hunt, and whether they would ever know that he had been
treacherously krissed in that out-of-the-way place.

A grim smile crossed his lip as he wished that he might be thrown
afterwards in the river, and his body float down to be seen by the
English people, so that they might know why he had stopped away.

And then a thrill ran through him, for a couple of his captors seized
him, and in the dim green light of the place, with a few thin pencils of
sunshine striking straight through like silver threads from roof to
floor, he saw a third man draw his deadly kris.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

HOW PRIVATE GRAY PROVED SUSPICIOUS.

Adam Gray left the men in the mess-room that night, chatting about the
coming tiger-hunt, and wondering who would be selected to accompany the
expedition. He could not help thinking, as he shouldered his rifle, and
was marched off by a sergeant with half-a-dozen more, to relieve guard,
that he should like to be one of the party himself. In happy bygone
days he had been fond of sport, and in a trip to North America were
well-remembered perils and pleasant adventures. And now this talk of
the tiger-hunt had roused in him a strong interest, and set him
recalling days, when he was very different to what he was now.

"It's no good to sigh," he said to himself, and the measured tramp,
tramp of the marching men sounded solemn and strange in the darkness,
rousing him once more to a sense of his position.

"If I'm to go, I go," he said bitterly. "That will be as my superiors
please; and if I do go, it will not be as a hunter."

In spite of himself; however, as soon as guard had been relieved, and he
was left in charge of a post not far from Dullah's hut, his thoughts
went back to his early career, and he grew at times quite excited as he
compared it with the life he was living now.

Then his thoughts wandered to the residency, and from thence back to the
day when he was bitten by the sea snake, and lay there upon the deck
tended by Miss Linton.

These thoughts agitated him, so that he set off pacing