and Miss Grant, and the youngsters, and all of us depend on
you in this business. Don't come back beaten. Don't let anything stop
you. Get him drunk or get him sober--friendly or fighting--but get the
truth, and get the proofs of it. Choke it out of the old hound somehow."

Hugh said that he would, and departed, weighed down by responsibility,
to execute his difficult mission. He had to go into an untravelled
country to get the truth out of a man who did not want to tell it; and
the time allowed was short, as the case could not be postponed much
longer.

He travelled by sea to Port Faraway, a tropical sweltering township by
the Northern seas of Australia, and when he reached it felt like one of
the heroes in Tennyson's Lotus Eaters--he had come "into a land wherein
it seemed always afternoon."

Reeves, the buffalo shooter, was a well-known man, but to find his camp
was another matter. No one seemed to have energy enough to take much
interest in the quest.

Hugh interviewed a leading citizen at the hotel, and got very little
satisfaction. He said, "I want to get out to Reeves's camp. Do you know
where it is, and how one gets there?"

"Well," said the leading citizen, putting his feet up on the arms of his
long chair and gasping for air, "Le's see! Reeves's camp--ah! Where is
he camped now?"

"I don't know," said Hugh. "I wish I did. That's what I want to find
out."

"Hopkins'd know. Hopkins, the storekeeper. He sends out the supplies.
Did you ask him?"

"No," said Hugh. "I didn't. I'll go and ask him now."

"Too hot to bustle round now," said the leading citizen, lighting his
pipe. "What'll you have to drink? Have some square; it's the best drink
here."

Hugh thought it well to fall in with the customs of the inhabitants,
so he had a stiff gin-and-water at nine in the morning, a thing he had
never done, or even seen done, in his life before. Then he went over in
the blazing sunlight to the storekeeper, and asked whether he knew where
Reeves' camp was.

"That I don't," said the storekeeper. "I send out what they want by
a Malay who sails a one-masted craft round the coast, and goes up the
river to their camp, and brings the hides back. They send a blackfellow
to let me know when they want any stuff, and where to send it."

"Perhaps I could go out with the next lot of stuff," said Hugh. "When
will they want it, do you think?"

"Well, they mightn't want any more. They might go on now till the wet
season,