ught of it by day and I
nursed it by night. It became an overpowering, absorbing passion with
me. I cared nothing for the law,--nothing for the gallows. To escape,
to track down Sholto, to have my hand upon his throat,--that was my one
thought. Even the Agra treasure had come to be a smaller thing in my
mind than the slaying of Sholto.

"Well, I have set my mind on many things in this life, and never one
which I did not carry out. But it was weary years before my time came.
I have told you that I had picked up something of medicine. One day
when Dr. Somerton was down with a fever a little Andaman Islander was
picked up by a convict-gang in the woods. He was sick to death, and
had gone to a lonely place to die. I took him in hand, though he was
as venomous as a young snake, and after a couple of months I got him
all right and able to walk. He took a kind of fancy to me then, and
would hardly go back to his woods, but was always hanging about my hut.
I learned a little of his lingo from him, and this made him all the
fonder of me.

"Tonga--for that was his name--was a fine boatman, and owned a big,
roomy canoe of his own. When I found that he was devoted to me and
would do anything to serve me, I saw my chance of escape. I talked it
over with him. He was to bring his boat round on a certain night to an
old wharf which was never guarded, and there he was to pick me up. I
gave him directions to have several gourds of water and a lot of yams,
cocoa-nuts, and sweet potatoes.

"He was stanch and true, was little Tonga. No man ever had a more
faithful mate. At the night named he had his boat at the wharf. As it
chanced, however, there was one of the convict-guard down there,--a
vile Pathan who had never missed a chance of insulting and injuring me.
I had always vowed vengeance, and now I had my chance. It was as if
fate had placed him in my way that I might pay my debt before I left
the island. He stood on the bank with his back to me, and his carbine
on his shoulder. I looked about for a stone to beat out his brains
with, but none could I see. Then a queer thought came into my head and
showed me where I could lay my hand on a weapon. I sat down in the
darkness and unstrapped my wooden leg. With three long hops I was on
him. He put his carbine to his shoulder, but I struck him full, and
knocked the whole front of his skull in. You can see the split in the
wood now where I hit him. We both went down to