Broncho had a ball of spun-yarn and a thole-pin in his hand. With these he scientifically gagged the terrified ruffian before he could make a sound; then, casting him loose from the tree, with Tari in the lead tugging on a rope made fast to the miserable wretch's wrists, and the other two on each side of him, they made an ominous-looking procession through the black patches of shadow and gleaming shafts of moonlight in the palm-grove. Tari, his great harpoon like a wand of office in one hand and the rope attached to the prisoner in the other, sagging and tautening like a towline as the unhappy man hung back in terror and was jerked forward again, stalked ahead through the scrub and palms without a moment's hesitation as to his course, and in silence they threaded their way with stern eyes and grimly set jaws. But what was that? Yes, there it was again! A human form dodging on their trail, taking advantage of every bit of shadow and gliding after them with the silence of a cat's tread. For a second the pale moonlight glinted on a white, agonised face with big, frightened eyes, but firmly compressed lips. It was little Jim. The one of all others the conspirators thought they had least to fear from. But the boy was quick-eared, and his wits had been sharpened in the roughest school in the world. All that long evening he had shivered under the knowledge that some deadly deed was in planning for the midnight hours. Shrewdly he guessed the object of those long deliberations between the cowboy and the man-of-war's man. A word caught here and there of dread significance, and his hastily formed conclusions were confirmed. Unable to sleep, racked with uncertainty as to what to do, as to whether he ought to inform the unconscious rover or let matters take their course, and nursing his grim knowledge, the boy lay quaking through the long hours of the first watch. Then at midnight, obeying the impulse of the moment, he counterfeited sleep to avoid detection; but on the three conspirators moving off he was unable to contain himself longer, and rising stealthily, he crept off on their trail, still undecided as to what he ought to do, but dragged after them by an unknown influence which gave him a sufficiency of nerve and cunning to avoid being discovered and yet left the problem still unsolved in his tortured brain. Presently the little procession arrived at an open piece of ground in the midst of the forest, like a fairy glade, surrounded as it was by the stately trunks of the cocoa-palms standing majestically like the columns of a Greek circular temple. In the centre of this open space grew a gigantic tree, like a king circled by his courtiers. Up to this monarch of the grove Tari led his captive, and halted.