d him down was no
reason that he should now try to kill him.

In this fashion he covered a quarter of the distance between the two
rivers, when it dawned upon him that Tudor was not on the beach at all.
Of course not. He was advancing, according to the terms of the
agreement, in the shelter of the cocoanut trees. Sheldon promptly
swerved to the left to seek similar shelter, when the faint crack of a
rifle came to his ears, and almost immediately the bullet, striking the
hard sand a hundred feet beyond him, ricochetted and whined onward on a
second flight, convincing him that, preposterous and unreal as it was, it
was nevertheless sober fact. It had been intended for him. Yet even
then it was hard to believe. He glanced over the familiar landscape and
at the sea dimpling in the light but steady breeze. From the direction
of Tulagi he could see the white sails of a schooner laying a tack across
toward Berande. Down the beach a horse was grazing, and he idly wondered
where the others were. The smoke rising from the copra-drying caught his
eyes, which roved on over the barracks, the tool-houses, the boat-sheds,
and the bungalow, and came to rest on Joan's little grass house in the
corner of the compound.

Keeping now to the shelter of the trees, he went forward another quarter
of a mile. If Tudor had advanced with equal speed they should have come
together at that point, and Sheldon concluded that the other was
circling. The difficulty was to locate him. The rows of trees, running
at right angles, enabled him to see along only one narrow avenue at a
time. His enemy might be coming along the next avenue, or the next, to
right or left. He might be a hundred feet away or half a mile. Sheldon
plodded on, and decided that the old stereotyped duel was far simpler and
easier than this protracted hide-and-seek affair. He, too, tried
circling, in the hope of cutting the other's circle; but, without
catching a glimpse of him, he finally emerged upon a fresh clearing where
the young trees, waist-high, afforded little shelter and less hiding.
Just as he emerged, stepping out a pace, a rifle cracked to his right,
and though he did not hear the bullet in passing, the thud of it came to
his ears when it struck a palm-trunk farther on.

He sprang back into the protection of the larger trees. Twice he had
exposed himself and been fired at, while he had failed to catch a single
glimpse of his antagonist. A slow anger began