h you, if you have a
cigar handy."

Trent drew a handful of cigars from his pocket. "They're beastly," he
said, "but it's a beastly country. I'll be glad to turn my back on it."

"There is a good deal," Da Souza said, "which we must now talk about."

"To-morrow," Trent said curtly. "No more now! I haven't got over my
miserable journey yet. I'm going to try and get some sleep."

He swung out into the heavy darkness. The air was thick with unwholesome
odours rising from the lake-like swamp beyond the drooping circle of
trees. He walked a little way towards the sea, and sat down upon a log.
A faint land-breeze was blowing, a melancholy soughing came from
the edge of the forest only a few hundred yards back, sullen,
black, impenetrable. He turned his face inland unwillingly, with a
superstitious little thrill of fear. Was it a coyote calling, or had he
indeed heard the moan of a dying man, somewhere back amongst that dark,
gloomy jungle? He scoffed at himself! Was he becoming as a girl, weak
and timid? Yet a moment later he closed his eyes, and pressed his hands
tightly over his hot eyeballs. He was a man of little imaginative force,
yet the white face of a dying man seemed suddenly to have floated up out
of the darkness, to have come to him like a will-o'-the-wisp from the
swamp, and the hollow, lifeless eyes seemed ever to be seeking his,
mournful and eloquent with dull reproach. Trent rose to his feet with
an oath and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He was trembling, and he
cursed himself heartily.

"Another fool's hour like this," he muttered, "and the fever will
have me. Come out of the shadows, you white-faced, skulking reptile,
you--bah! what a blithering fool I am! There is no one there! How could
there be any one?"

He listened intently. From afar off came the faint moaning of the wind
in the forest and the night sounds of restless animals. Nearer there was
no one--nothing stirred. He laughed out loud and moved away to spend his
last night in his little wooden home. On the threshold he paused, and
faced once more that black, mysterious line of forest.

"Well, I've done with you now," he cried, a note of coarse exultation in
his tone. "I've gambled for my life and I've won. To-morrow I'll begin
to spend the stakes."

CHAPTER VII

In a handsomely appointed room of one of the largest hotels in London
a man was sitting at the head of a table strewn with blotting-paper and
writing materials of every