at utter quiet. The trees
sprang toward us and the roar rolled back from angry rocks. Like a
multi-colored dust of the explosion burst a myriad of screaming birds,
lories, parakeets, kingfishers, flashing motes of green and blue and
scarlet in the sunshine. But they dwindled and passed. The echoes died.
The smoke drifted away and the green wall closed up without a scar; the
silence engulfed us once more, floating there, futile invaders who
assaulted its immense riddle with a squib....

"They don't seem to care much," giggled Jeckol.

But Bartlet raised a finger.

Far away in the wood something stirred. It drew nearer, with long
pauses, pressing on and at last charging recklessly through the
undergrowth. We had the spot covered from half a dozen rifles as there
broke out at the verge a creature that leaped and clung among the
creepers.

"Mahrster!" it cried, imploring. "Mahrster!"

A man--though more like a naked, starving ape with his knobby joints and
the bones in a rack under his black skin--and shaken now by the ecstasy
of terror! Not at us. He faced the guns without wincing. His beady eyes
kept coasting behind him the way he had come as if he looked to see a
dreadful hand reach from the thicket and pluck him back. The jungle, the
land, was what he feared--

"Mahrster," he gasped, "you take'm me that fella boat along you! One
fella ship-boy me--good fella too much!"

"What name?" challenged Peters. "What fella ship?"

From the chattered reply we caught a startling word.

"By Joe--he's one of their boys! Give way, cap'n."...

We edged in until Peters could yank the quaking bundle aboard and pulled
again to safety from the mangrove shadow while the fugitive stammered
his story in broken _beche de mer_.

It was true: we had found a survivor from the lost _Timothy S._ Kakwe,
he called himself, and he had come to Barange "long time before
altogether." Two months, at least, we judged. In the attack on the
schooner he had escaped by swimming. Himself a Papuan, of a different
tribe and region, he had taken to the tree tops after the fashion of his
own people, the painted monkey folk of Princess Marianne Straits--a
facility to which he owed his life, it appeared, for he had since lived
on fruits and nuts among the cockatoos, undiscovered.

This much we gathered from his gabble before Peters caught him up.

"But the others--them white fella?"

"All finish," said Kakwe bluntly.

"How?" cried Peters.

"No sa