. That's all."

They both laughed a little, and not feeling sleepy began to pace the
verandah side by side. The moon rose stealthily above the trees, and
suddenly changed the river into a stream of scintillating silver. The
forest came out of the black void and stood sombre and pensive over the
sparkling water. The breeze died away into a breathless calm.

Seamanlike, the two officers tramped measuredly up and down without
exchanging a word. The loose planks rattled rhythmically under their
steps with obstrusive dry sound in the perfect silence of the night. As
they were wheeling round again the younger man stood attentive.

"Did you hear that?" he asked.

"No!" said the other. "Hear what?"

"I thought I heard a cry. Ever so faint. Seemed a woman's voice. In
that other house. Ah! Again! Hear it?"

"No," said the lieutenant, after listening awhile. "You young fellows
always hear women's voices. If you are going to dream you had better get
into your hammock. Good-night."

The moon mounted higher, and the warm shadows grew smaller and crept away
as if hiding before the cold and cruel light.

CHAPTER X.

"It has set at last," said Nina to her mother pointing towards the hills
behind which the sun had sunk. "Listen, mother, I am going now to
Bulangi's creek, and if I should never return--"

She interrupted herself, and something like doubt dimmed for a moment the
fire of suppressed exaltation that had glowed in her eyes and had
illuminated the serene impassiveness of her features with a ray of eager
life during all that long day of excitement--the day of joy and anxiety,
of hope and terror, of vague grief and indistinct delight. While the sun
shone with that dazzling light in which her love was born and grew till
it possessed her whole being, she was kept firm in her unwavering resolve
by the mysterious whisperings of desire which filled her heart with
impatient longing for the darkness that would mean the end of danger and
strife, the beginning of happiness, the fulfilling of love, the
completeness of life. It had set at last! The short tropical twilight
went out before she could draw the long breath of relief; and now the
sudden darkness seemed to be full of menacing voices calling upon her to
rush headlong into the unknown; to be true to her own impulses, to give
herself up to the passion she had evoked and shared. He was waiting! In
the solitude of the secluded clearing, in the va