"If the fire has burned out before dawn," he said coldly, "I'll go looking for them. It's going to be cold-blooded, and it's going to be rather pitiful, I think, but there's nothing else to do. You try to get some rest. You'll need it." And for all the rest of the dark hours he crouched in the little angle formed by the roots of the forest giant, and kept a thickly smoking little fire going, and listened to the noises of the jungle all about him. * * * * * It was more than a mile back to the town. It was nearer two. But it was vastly less difficult to force a way through the thick growths by daylight, even though then it was not easy. With machetes, of course, Bell and Paula would have had no trouble, but theirs had been left in the plane. Bell made a huge club and battered openings by sheer strength where it was necessary. Sweat streamed down his face before he had covered five hundred yards, but then something occurred to him and he went more easily. If there were any of the intelligent class of The Master's subjects left in the little settlement, he wanted to allow time enough for them to start their flight. He wanted to find the place empty of all but laborers, who would be accustomed to obey any man who spoke arrogantly and in the manner of a deputy of The Master. Yet he did not want to wait too long. Panic spreads among the _camarada_ class as swiftly as among more intelligent folk, and it is even more blind and hysterical. It was nearly eleven o'clock before they emerged upon a cleared field where brightly blooming plants grew hugely. Bell regarded these grimly. "These," he observed, "will be The Master's stock." Paula touched his arm. "I have heard," she said, and shuddered, "that the men who gather the plants that go to make the poisons of the _Indios_ do not--do not dare to sleep near the fresh-picked plants. They say that the odor is dangerous, even the perfume of the blossoms." "Very probably," said Bell. "I wish I could destroy the damned things. But since we can't, why, we'll go around the edge of the field." * * * * * He went upwind, skirting the edge of the planted things. A path showed, winding over half-heartedly cleared ground. He followed it, with Paula close behind him. Smoke still curled heavily upward from the heaps of ashes which he reached first of all. He looked upon them with an unpleasant satisfaction. He had to pick his way between still smoking heaps of embers to reach the huts about which laborers stood listlessly, not working because not ordered to work, not yet frightened because not yet realizing fully the catastrophe that had come upon them. He was moving toward them, deliberately adopting an air of suppressed rage, when a voice called whiningly. "Senhor! Senhor!" And then pleadingly, in Portuguese, "I have news for The Master! I have news for The Master!"