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track. She didn’t know that she turned right instead of left; nor did she feel the cool tug of wild banana leaves as she floundered through the bush. Right arm across her breast, the palm cupped over the long sticky wound in her left upper arm, her chin sunk to ease the dreadful rasp as she breathed, Phil staggered on in the cool, moist darkness.
    She came to the clearing and attempted to run. Somehow she mounted the steps and reached the veranda.
    A man leapt from his chair within the room and crashed wide the mesh door. She gave a dry, racking sob.
    “Julian! Oh, Julian!”
     

CHAPTER IX
    WHILE he cleaned the wound and dressed it she lay white and still on the couch, scarcely breathing. But as he was washing the blood from her forearm and hands the drug he had made her gulp down with whisky began to wear off, and fiery waves of pain engulfed her. She trembled and sweated, a defenceless collection of nerves and agonies.
    Julian held her and wiped her brow with a damp cloth. He spoke quietly, only his eyes revealing a cold and deadly violence.
    “It’s the antiseptic that’s giving you gyp, but I had to use plenty to prevent infection. It’s a brute of a gash, but the worst should be over soon. Talk a bit, if you can.” He was pale at the nostrils as he measured his thumb over the purpling mark at her throat. “Who was it?”
    “I ... I did it myself . . . fired the automatic. He was .. . drunk.”
    “Who?”
    “Clin. The gun went off and he . . . ran away.”
    “I’ll deal with Clin Dakers tonight.”
    “No ... let him go. He’s sailing at dawn.”
    “By God he is! Maybe before.” He put a glass to her lips. “You’re to sleep now. I’ll find you a capsule and leave some boys on guard.”
    He went out and came back wearing a jacket. As he bent to give her a clean handkerchief his pocket swung forward and she clutched it, feeling the hard shape it contained.
    “No more shooting, Julian. Please!”
    “I always carry it. Get some sleep.”
    Outside he called the boys, instructed them in curt dialect, and slid into the car. As the trees thinned on either side of the road he noticed the orange glow between and above them, and from where the plantation ended the blaze was clearly visible. One of the houses on the cliff was afire.
    Half-way along the bush track his beams picked out the gesticulating outline of a man, and he pulled up beside the coughing, choking figure of Roger Crawford.
    “It’s Phil’s house,” he panted. “Practically gutted, and we can’t find her.”
    “Get in,” ordered Julian. “She’s at my place.”
    Roger slumped into the seat, made a strangled sound and dropped his face into his hands. Farther on they picked up Drew, and Julian drove past the flaming building, past Matt’s dark dwelling to the equally blank-looking house that belonged to Clin Dakers.
    He told them what had happened. “So now we find the devil,” he said without emotion. “A quick glance over the house and then we’ll go down to the waterfront to search the vessel that’s getting ready to leave.”
    Clin’s trunk still stood in his bare, musty living-room. His bed was stripped of everything save the disintegrating mattress. As they came out again Julian made a swift dive after a cotton-clad woman who was sidling, bent low, along the path towards the track. He yanked her to her feet.
    “So it’s you, you I’ll—”
    “Missus Pheel,” she whimpered. “She dead.”
    Julian had flung her down again, but Roger stayed to say, Missus has been hurt, Manoela, by the white master who lives in here. You tell us if you see him.”
    She wailed something and grovelled away.
     
    Phil slept, unaware that at intervals the houseboy came in with the insect spray or to examine the lamp. He was there when she awoke, and the lamp was out. Pencils of grey light invaded the room through the Venetian blinds, and somewhere in the building a native was singing as he started his chores for the day.
    She said, “Has