He strolled away, fanning himself. Trent lit a long cigar. “I understand,” he said turning to Oom Sam, “that old Monty is alive still. If so, it's little short of a miracle, for I left him with scarcely a gasp in his body, and I was nearly done myself. “It was,” Oom Sam said, “veree wonderful. The natives who were chasing you, they found him and then the Englishman whom you met in Bekwando on his way inland, he rescued him. You see that little white house with a flagstaff yonder?” He pointed to a little one-storey building about a mile away along the coast. Trent nodded. “That is,” Oom Sam said, “a station of the Basle Mission and old Monty is there. You can go and see him any time you like, but he will not know you.” “Is he as far gone as that?” Trent asked slowly. “His mind,” Oom Sam said, “is gone. One little flickering spark of life goes on. A day! a week! who can tell how long?” “Has he a doctor?” Trent asked. “The missionary, he is a medical man,” Oom Sam explained. “Yet he is long past the art of medicine.” It seemed to Trent, turning at that moment to relight his cigar, that a look of subtle intelligence was flashed from one to the other of the brothers. He paused with the match in his fingers, puzzled, suspicious, anxious. So there was some scheme hatched already between these precious pair! It was time indeed that he had come. “There was something else I wanted to ask,” he said a moment or two later. “What about the man Francis. Has he been heard of lately?” Oom Sam shook his head. “Ten months ago,” he answered, “a trader from Lulabulu reported having passed him on his way to the interior. He spoke of visiting Sugbaroo, another country beyond. If he ventured there, he will surely never return.” Trent set down his glass without a word, and called to some Kru boys in the square who carried litters. “I am going,” he said, “to find Monty.” CHAPTER XXIV An old man, with his face turned to the sea, was making a weary attempt at digging upon a small potato patch. The blaze of the tropical sun had become lost an hour or so before in a strange, grey mist, rising not from the sea, but from the swamps which lay here and there--brilliant, verdant patches of poison and pestilence. With the mist came a moist, sticky heat, the air was fetid. Trent wiped the perspiration from his forehead and breathed hard. This was an evil moment for him. Monty turned round at the sound of his approaching footsteps. The two men stood face to face. Trent looked eagerly for some sign of recognition--none came. “Don't you know me?” Trent said huskily. “I'm Scarlett Trent--we went up to Bekwando together, you know. I thought you were dead, Monty, or I wouldn't have left you.” “Eh! What!” Monty mumbled for a moment or two and was silent. A look of dull disappointment struggled with the vacuity of his face. Trent noticed that his hands were shaking pitifully and his eyes were bloodshot.