he heard the sound of two shots, and by its
sharp crack knew that one came from Jinaban's rifle--the rifle he had
given to the slaughtered Jelik. Urging his canoe along the surface of
the quiet water, Palmer soon reached the beach of Ailap village, and
was horrified to learn that the man he had sought had just left after
shooting a lad of fifteen--a cousin of Letane--whom he had surprised
while fishing in the lagoon. Cutting off the boy's head, Jinaban had
boldly stalked through the village till he reached Palmer's house,
through the open window of which he had thrown his gory trophy, and then
made his escape.

The trader's wife, who at the time was sleeping in the big room of the
house, surrounded by half a dozen natives armed with muskets, at once
sprang up, and, seizing a rifle, started in pursuit, for she feared that
Jinaban had learnt of Palmer's absence, and would wait for and shoot him
as he crossed the lagoon. She managed to reach the beach in time to
see the escaping murderer paddling along in his canoe close in shore.
Kneeling down, she took careful aim and fired. A mocking laugh answered
the shot.

*****

That was the story that Palmer told the half-caste Maori, who listened
to him attentively throughout.

For some minutes, however, after the trader had finished, he did not
speak, and then at last said in his slow, methodical way--

"I will promise you that I'll get you Jinaban, dead or alive, before a
week is out. And I don't want money. But I want you, please, to get
some one of your natives here to come and tell me all they can about
Jinaban's friends in the other village."

Palmer called to his wife. She came in, heavy-eyed and pale-faced, for
the youth whose head she and her women had just buried was much attached
to her, and her husband as well. At that moment the lad's relatives were
searching the lagoon in the hope of finding the body, into which it had
doubtless been thrown by the ruthless hand of Jinaban; and Letane had
just returned alone to the house.

In a very short time the half-caste learnt from Letane that Sepe, who
lived in Jinaban's village, was strongly suspected of receiving visits
from the outlaw, and even of visiting the man himself; for on several
occasions she had been absent from her mother's house for two or three
days at a time. And as most of Jinaban's people were in secret sympathy
with their outlawed chief, the girl's movements were never commented on
by the inhabitants