now, in the midst of the chase, whether it might not be that
Purvis was playing them false.

'I 'll shoot him before he can sing out if he is!' thought Peter to
himself as the boat was steered on to the very edge of a shallow again,
and then made off into the middle of the stream. 'Look out what you
are about!' he cried, seeing in the wake of the boat the uneven,
circuitous route by which they had come. 'For God's sake steer
straight if you can!'

And then he saw a smile on Purvis's face--the usual watery, mirthless
smile, and the pale, wide-open blue eyes; and, looking back, Peter saw
that the boat behind them was overturned in the stream, and that the
men who had been in it were struggling to the bank, while the boat
itself was being carried rapidly down with the current.

He eased his rowing then, and getting his breath he laughed out aloud.
The spirit and excitement of the chase had been good, and it was
successfully over.

'Look here, you can get up now, Toffy,' he said.

He turned round in his seat and shipped his oars with a jerk. '_You
devil!_' he said slowly; '_you must have seen him hit!_'

He bent over the poor boy stretched out in the bottom of the boat and
felt his heart and found that it still beat. He loosened his neckcloth
and sprinkled water on his face, while the two other men fell to their
oars again, and rowed the boat as the day dawned to the little Italian
settlement. They carried Toffy into the house of the Argentine woman
who burned candles to the Virgin and stuck French paper match-boxes
round her shrine. They lifted him into the hut and laid him on the
humble bed, and Peter dressed the wound as well as he knew how, while
Hopwood in an agony hovered round them, and Ross was sending here and
there to try to find a doctor.

No one knew what had become of Purvis, no one cared. Each was trying
with all his might to save a life very dear to them which was slowly
ebbing away.

The sun was up now, and the long hot day was beginning; but still Toffy
had never spoken, and still Peter kneeled by his side on the mud floor
of the hut, easing him as well as he could, giving him water to drink,
or bathing his forehead. There was not much that he could do for him;
but he felt that Toffy was conscious, and that he liked to have his old
friend near him. He never altered his position as he kneeled, for his
arm was under the dying man's head, and it seemed a more comfortable
place for it than th