enly. "Do you want money? More money
than you ever saw before?"

The breed shook his head. "No. De money can't buy w'at I wan'."

"What do you want?"

Again came the twisted smile. "Mebbe-so we eat de suppaire firs'. I
got som' feesh. We buil' de fire an' cook 'um."

The meal was eaten in silence, and during its progress Wentworth in a
measure recovered his nerve.

"You haven't told me yet what you want," he suggested when they had
lighted their pipes and thrown on an armful of greens for a smudge.

Between the narrowed lids the black eyes seemed to smoulder as they
fixed upon the face of the white man. "I wan' you heart," he said,
casually. "Red in my han's I wan' it, an' squeeze de blood out, an'
watch it splash on de rocks. Mebbe-so I'm eat a piece dat heart, an'
feed de res' to my dog."

Wentworth's pipe dropped to the gravel and lay there. He uttered no
sound. The wind had died down and save for the droning hum of a
billion mosquitoes the silence was absolute. A thin column of smoke
streamed from the bowl of the neglected pipe. In profound fascination
Wentworth watched it flow smoothly upward. An imperceptible air
current set the column swaying and wavering, and a light puff of breeze
dispersed it in a swirl of heavy yellow smoke from the smudge. Dully,
impersonally, he sensed that the half-breed had just told him that he
would squeeze the red blood from his heart and watch it splash upon the
rocks. His eyes rested upon the rocks rimmed up by the ice above the
gravelly beach. The blood would splash there, and there, and those
other rocks would be spattered with tiny drops of it--his blood, the
blood from his own heart which Alex Thumb would squeeze dry, as one
would wring water from a sponge. He wondered that he felt no sense of
fear. He believed that Alex Thumb would do that, yet it was a matter
that seemed not of any importance. He raised his eyes and encountered
the malevolent glare of the breed. The black eyes seemed to glow with
an inner lustre, like the smoulder of banked fires.

With a start he seemed to have returned from some far place. The words
of Corporal Downey flittered through his brain: "You'll be servin' with
the devils in hell if you don't quit makin' enemies of men like Alex
Thumb." And there was Alex Thumb regarding him through narrowed
smouldering eyes across the little fire. Alex Thumb would kill him!
Would kill _him_--Ross Wentworth! The whole thing was prep