trees, his eyes lighted on Joseph,
standing within the door of the cottage, watching him with a singular
half-suppressed smile.

"Yes," he said hurriedly, "I will start at once. I can eat some sort of
a breakfast when we are under way."

He looked beneath his lashes quickly from Jack to Guy and back again.
Their silent acquiescence was not quite satisfactory. Then he called
his own men, and spoke to them in a tongue unknown to the Englishmen.
He hurried forward their preparations with a feverish irritability which
made Jack Meredith think of the first time he had ever seen Durnovo--a
few miles farther down the river--all palpitating and trembling with
climatic nervousness. His face was quite yellow, and there was a line
drawn diagonally from the nostrils down each cheek, to lose itself
ultimately in the heavy black moustache.

Before he stepped into his canoe the thunder was rumbling in the
distance, and the air was still as death. Breathing was an effort; the
inhaled air did not satisfy the lungs, and seemed powerless to expand
them.

Overhead the clouds, of a blue-black intensity, seemed almost to touch
the trees; the river was of ink. The rowers said nothing, but they
lingered on the bank and watched Durnovo's face anxiously. When he took
his seat in the canoe they looked protestingly up to the sky. Durnovo
said something to them rapidly, and they laid their paddles to the
water.

Scarcely had the boat disappeared in the bend of the river before the
rain broke. It came with the rush of an express train--the trees bending
before the squall like reeds. The face of the river was tormented into
a white fury by the drops which splashed up again a foot in height. The
lashing of the water on the bare backs of the negroes was distinctly
audible to Victor Durnovo.

Then the black clouds split up like a rent cloth, and showed behind
them, not Heaven, but the living fire of Hell. The thunder crashed out
in sharp reports like file-firing at a review. With one accord the men
ceased rowing and crouched down in the canoe.

Durnovo shouted to them, his face livid with fury. But for some moments
his voice was quite lost. The lightning ran over the face of the river
like will-o'-the-wisps; the whole heaven was streaked continuously with
it.

Suddenly the negroes leaped to their paddles and rowed with bent back,
and wild staring eyes, as if possessed. They were covered by the muzzle
of Durnovo's revolver.

Behind the evil