They crawled along to the edge of their shadow, hugging it fondly. The slight fall in ground deepened to a little gully that hid them better--now the storehouse was between them and the first sentry and they could breathe a trifle easier. They were going in the opposite direction from the wharves, but that they could not help till they were sure of having passed beyond the cordon. When it seemed that they must have done so, they began to circle back, Sebastian leading the way. He slipped along like an Indian, Andrew tried despairingly to copy his lightness of foot. At last they were down below the storehouse and the way ahead seemed clear. Andrew snatched a look at the sentry through a screen of brush. The man was yawning, eyes squinted, head thrown back. He had a ridiculous impulse to flip a pebble at the gaping mouth, and between that and dreading the sound of his own feet was so absorbed that when Sebastian, creeping ahead of him, suddenly darted into the door of a deserted and roofless hut by the side of the wood-path his nerves jerked like plucked fiddlestrings. Once inside the hut, he soon knew the reason for their taking cover. There were footsteps and a mumble of talk coming up toward the hut from the lower road. "Tricked," said a leaden accent, "Tricked, by God. A pack of lousy indigo-diggers to trick us so." Andrew recognized the dull, detested voice with a pang of hate. A lucid whisper--serene pulse of gold trembling in hollow of crystal shell--answered the voice and soothed it. "It does not matter, Charles. We can do without the Mahonese." "Aye," said Cave. "Aye. We'll have to do without them, now. But--tricked, by God. I can't get over it, sweetheart. Who'd have thought they had the guts in them to run away?" "Charles, Charles, don't think of that now. We are wasting time." There was a mutter, then the voices sank. Andrew glared cautiously through a chink in the rotten wall of the hut. It was folly he knew, but he could not lie there and listen without trying to see. Not ten steps away, in a patch of moonlight, stood Sparta and Mr. Cave. They were talking together in soft, tense voices--she had her hand on his wrist, she was wheedling him as if he were an unruly child.