y the way. His eyes
became oblivious of the tangled and overcrowded life about him, of the
hectic orchids and huge butterflies and the flaming birds-of-paradise,
of the echoing aisle ways between interwoven jungle growths, of the
arching aerial roofs of verdure and the shadowy hanging-gardens from
which by day parakeets chattered and monkeys screamed and by night
ghostly armies of fireflies glowed. He was no longer impressed by that
world of fierce appetites and fierce conflicts. He seemed to have
attained to a secret inner calm, to an obsessional impassivity across
which the passing calamities of existence only echoed. He merely
recalled that he had been compelled to eat of disagreeable things and
face undesirable emergencies, to drink of the severed Water-vine, to
partake of monkey-steak and broiled parrot, to sleep in poisonous
swamplands. His spirit, even with the mournful cry of night birds in
his ears, had been schooled into the acceptance of a loneliness that to
another might have seemed eternal and unendurable.

By the time he had reached the Pacific coast his haggard hound's eyes
were more haggard than ever. His skin hung loose on his great body, as
though a vampire bat had drained it of its blood. But to his own
appearance he gave scant thought. For new life came to him when he
found definite traces of Binhart. These traces he followed up, one by
one, until he found himself circling back eastward along the valley of
the Magdalena. And down the Magdalena he went, still sure of his
quarry, following him to Bogota, and on again from Bogota to
Barranquilla, and on to Savanilla, where he embarked on a
Hamburg-American steamer for Limon.

At Limon it was not hard to pick up the lost trail. But Binhart's
movements, after leaving that port, became a puzzle to the man who had
begun to pride himself on growing into knowledge of his adversary's
inmost nature. For once Blake found himself uncertain as to the
other's intentions. The fugitive now seemed possessed with an idea to
get away from the sea, to strike inland at any cost, as though water
had grown a thing of horror to him. He zigzagged from obscure village
to village, as though determined to keep away from all main-traveled
avenues of traffic. Yet, move as he might, it was merely a matter of
time and care to follow up the steps of a white man as distinctly
individualized as Binhart.

This white man, it seemed, was at last giving way to the terror