Then somehow his eyes swung round to the dancing horizon, and the Liverpool steamer's smoke, boring up towards the North, easily ferried his thoughts across the gap which lay between that baking African beach, and the cool village tucked snugly in beneath the Upper Wharfedale moors. He tried to concentrate his mind on the roses in the vicarage garden. His mother liked abundance of blooms, and cared little about the size. The Vicar admired big blooms and snipped off superfluous buds when his wife was out of the way, and during summer a gentle wrangle over the roses was quite one of the features of their quiet life. But the roses refused to stay in the centre of the picture. Laura insisted on taking their place. Suppose he took Laura back to Wharfedale--as Mrs. George Carter. His mother, blessed woman, might be sorry, but she would accept her. He was sure of that. But his father? Almost the last piece of advice the Vicar had given on parting was: "Now, lad, remember always you're a white man, and don't get mixed up with any woman who owns a single drop of blood darker than your own. If you do, you can never come back here, and you'll hate yourself all the rest of your life. Remember I held an Indian chaplaincy before I got this living, and I know what I'm talking about." Carter shook a sudden fist at the steamer's smoke for supplying him with such a distasteful train of thought, and turned for light conversation to White-Man's-Trouble. That garrulous person was quite ready to humor him in the matter. The sea breeze died away a little after six, and they marched in breathless heat till the cool land breeze took its place, and brought them spicy odors of the inland trees. And always on one side of them the surf roared, and crashed, and creamed along the beaches. The sun drooped to the horizon and hurried beneath it in visible inches of fall. Daylight went out. The colors were blotted from the sky, and the stars lit up, one racing another to be first. The noises from the forest changed in correspondence. From close at hand a leopard roared a greeting to the darkness. Night was fully dressed ten minutes after the sun had vanished. It was after nine o'clock, and in the chill of a wet gray mist, that they reached O'Neill and Craven's factory on the banks of Smooth River. Now nine o'clock in the lonely factories of the Coast is usually bed time, and Carter was a good deal surprised to hear the hum of a great activity pulsing out into the night; and presently, when they came within eye-range, to see the buildings aglow with lights. But there was a further surprise packed and ready for him. As they came close, a black man leaned over the end of an upraised wall of palm oil puncheons, and deliberately pointed a gun squarely at Carter's chest.