He estimated that his flight had taken him miles into the interior. Evidently for the time being he had eluded the Cashibos. However, his situation was gravely critical, and he would never be safe until he got clear of Palcazu territory. It was impossible for him to protect himself from the jungle parasites. His instant and inflexible determination was to make his way back to the river, find his canoe, or steal one from the cannibals, and, failing both, lash some logs together and trust to the current. The rains were due; soon the rivers would be raging floods; he would make fast time. Manuel had no fear of starvation, of the deadly heat, the fatal dews, the rainy-season fever, or of the Cashibos. What he feared was the infernal flies, ticks, ants, mosquitoes--the whole blood-sucking horde. Well he knew that they might bite him blind, poison his blood, drive him mad, actually kill him before he got out of the jungle. As he was about to start, a small leather pocketbook fell from Señor’s coat. Manuel picked it up. He saw again those broad shoulders covered with the gaudy butterfly darts. He drew his breath with a sharp catch. Fingering the little book, unaccountably impelled, he opened it. Inside was a picture. He looked down into the dark, challenging eyes, the piquant, alluring face of the woman who had been his sweetheart wife! Manuel smiled dreamily. How clear was the vision! But almost instantly he jerked up his head, hid the picture, and gazed furtively about him, trembling and startled. The glaring jungle was no lying deceit of the fancy. Slowly he drew forth the picture. Again the proud, dark eyes, the sweet lips, the face arch with girl’s willfulness, importunate with woman’s charm! Manuel shifted his straining gaze to Señor’s coat. “Señor! He was the man--that sailor from over the sea--whom she loved at Malaga! What does it all mean? I felt his secret--I lied--I hatched that murderous story to help him. But he knew I did not kill her!” Manuel pitched high his arms, quivering, riven by the might of the truth. “He recognized me! He knew me all the time! He saved my life!” Manuel fell backward and lay motionless, with his hands shutting out the light. An hour passed. At last he arose, half dazed, fighting to understand. With Señor’s coat and the picture before him, he traced the wonderful association between them and him. There were the plain facts, as clear in his sight as the pictured face of the woman who had ruined him, but they were bewildering: he could feel but not comprehend them. They obscured their meaning in mystery, in the inscrutable mystery of human life. He had freed her, had left her to be happy with the man she loved.