Tudor's expedition.

Here at Carli, next morning, half-way through the grass-lands, the boat's-
crews were left, and with them the horde of Binu men, the boldest of
which held on for a bare mile and then ran scampering back. Binu
Charley, however, was at the fore, and led the way onward into the
rolling foothills, following the trail made by Tudor and his men weeks
before. That night they camped well into the hills and deep in the
tropic jungle. The third day found them on the run-ways of the
bushmen--narrow paths that compelled single file and that turned and
twisted with endless convolutions through the dense undergrowth. For the
most part it was a silent forest, lush and dank, where only occasionally
a wood-pigeon cooed or snow-white cockatoos laughed harshly in laborious
flight.

Here, in the mid-morning, the first casualty occurred. Binu Charley had
dropped behind for a time, and Koogoo, the Poonga-Poonga man who had
boasted that he would eat the bushmen, was in the lead. Joan and Sheldon
heard the twanging thrum and saw Koogoo throw out his arms, at the same
time dropping his rifle, stumble forward, and sink down on his hands and
knees. Between his naked shoulders, low down and to the left, appeared
the bone-barbed head of an arrow. He had been shot through and through.
Cocked rifles swept the bush with nervous apprehension. But there was no
rustle, no movement; nothing but the humid oppressive silence.

"Bushmen he no stop," Binu Charley called out, the sound of his voice
startling more than one of them. "Allee same damn funny business. That
fella Koogoo no look 'm eye belong him. He no savvee little bit."

Koogoo's arms had crumpled under him, and he lay quivering where he had
fallen. Even as Binu Charley came to the front the stricken black's
breath passed from him, and with a final convulsive stir he lay still.

"Right through the heart," Sheldon said, straightening up from the
stooping examination. "It must have been a trap of some sort."

He noticed Joan's white, tense face, and the wide eyes with which she
stared at the wreck of what had been a man the minute before.

"I recruited that boy myself," she said in a whisper. "He came down out
of the bush at Poonga-Poonga and right on board the _Martha_ and offered
himself. And I was proud. He was my very first recruit--"

"My word! Look 'm that fella," Binu Charley interrupted, brushing aside
the leafy wall of the run-way and exposing