e other's grief, for D'Arnot and
Charpentier had been inseparable friends since boyhood.

Clayton could not but realize that the Frenchman felt his grief the
more keenly because D'Arnot's sacrifice had been so futile, since Jane
had been rescued before D'Arnot had fallen into the hands of the
savages, and again because the service in which he had lost his life
had been outside his duty and for strangers and aliens; but when he
spoke of it to Lieutenant Charpentier, the latter shook his head.

"No, Monsieur," he said, "D'Arnot would have chosen to die thus. I
only grieve that I could not have died for him, or at least with him.
I wish that you could have known him better, Monsieur. He was indeed
an officer and a gentleman--a title conferred on many, but deserved by
so few.

"He did not die futilely, for his death in the cause of a strange
American girl will make us, his comrades, face our ends the more
bravely, however they may come to us."

Clayton did not reply, but within him rose a new respect for Frenchmen
which remained undimmed ever after.

It was quite late when they reached the cabin by the beach. A single
shot before they emerged from the jungle had announced to those in camp
as well as on the ship that the expedition had been too late--for it
had been prearranged that when they came within a mile or two of camp
one shot was to be fired to denote failure, or three for success, while
two would have indicated that they had found no sign of either D'Arnot
or his black captors.

So it was a solemn party that awaited their coming, and few words were
spoken as the dead and wounded men were tenderly placed in boats and
rowed silently toward the cruiser.

Clayton, exhausted from his five days of laborious marching through the
jungle and from the effects of his two battles with the blacks, turned
toward the cabin to seek a mouthful of food and then the comparative
ease of his bed of grasses after two nights in the jungle.

By the cabin door stood Jane.

"The poor lieutenant?" she asked. "Did you find no trace of him?"

"We were too late, Miss Porter," he replied sadly.

"Tell me. What had happened?" she asked.

"I cannot, Miss Porter, it is too horrible."

"You do not mean that they had tortured him?" she whispered.

"We do not know what they did to him BEFORE they killed him," he
answered, his face drawn with fatigue and the sorrow he felt for poor
D'Arnot and he emphasized the word before.

"BE