s
had ever given him this thing lay--the sjambok, the natural engine of
authority.

Suddenly Byng said with a voice of almost guttural anger: "You dropped
that letter on my bedroom floor--that letter, you understand?... Speak."

"I did it, Baas."

Byng was transformed. Slowly he laid down the sjambok, and as slowly
took off his coat, his eyes meanwhile fastening those of the wretched
man before him. Then he took up the sjambok again.

"You know what I am going to do with you?"

"Yes, Baas."

It never occurred to Byng that Krool would resist; it did not occur to
Krool that he could resist. Byng was the Baas, who at that moment was
the Power immeasurable. There was only one thing to do--to obey.

"You were told to leave my house by Mrs. Byng, and you did not go."

"She was not my Baas."

"You would have done her harm, if you could?"

"So, Baas."

With a low cry Byng ran forward, the sjambok swung through the air, and
the terrible whip descended on the crouching half-caste.

Krool gave one cry and fell back a little, but he made no attempt to
resist.

Suddenly Byng went to a window and threw it open.

"You can jump from there or take the sjambok. Which?" he said with a
passion not that of a man wholly sane. "Which?"

Krool's wild, sullen, trembling look sought the window, but he had no
heart for that enterprise--thirty feet to the pavement below.

"The sjambok, Baas," he said.

Once again Byng moved forward on him, and once again Krool's cry rang
out, but not so loud. It was like that of an animal in torture.

In the next room, Wallstein and Stafford and the others heard it, and
understood. Whispering together they listened, and Stafford shrank away
to the far side of the room; but more than one face showed pleasure in
the sound of the whip and the moaning.

It went on and on.

Barry Whalen, however, was possessed of a kind of fear, and presently
his face became troubled. This punishment was terrible. Byng might kill
the man, and all would be as bad as could be. Stafford came to him.

"You had better go in," he said. "We ought to intervene. If you don't,
I will. Listen...."

It was a strange sound to hear in this heart of civilization. It
belonged to the barbaric places of the earth, where there was no law,
where every pioneer was his own cadi.

With set face Barry Whalen entered the room. Byng paused for an instant
and looked at him with burning, glazed eyes that scarcely realized him.

"Op