“No, no, no,” he breathed. “You take the blood, that’s your job--I’m strong enough to stand it--one day I’ll get away....” Ten minutes later he fell into a sound sleep. Sanders found the soiled paper, and put it into his uniform pocket. He sent back to the boat and his men brought two tents which were pitched in a clearing near the hut. The man was in such a deplorable condition that Sanders dared not take the risk of moving him. That night, when the camp lay wrapped in sleep and the two native women whom the Commissioner had commanded to watch the sick man were snoring by their charge, the wreck woke. Stealthily he rose from bed and crept out into the starry night. Sanders woke to find an empty hut and a handful of rags that had once been a white man’s coat on the banks of the tiny forest stream, a hundred yards from the camp. * * * * * The witch-doctor of M’Saga, summoned to an early morning palaver, came in irons and was in no doubt as to the punishment which awaited him, for near by in the forest the Houssas had dug up much evidence of sacrifice. “Master,” said the man, facing the stare of grey eyes, “I see death in your face.” “That is God’s truth,” said Sanders, and hanged him then and there. CHAPTER I AMBER Amber sat in his cell at Wellboro’ gaol, softly whistling a little tune and beating time on the floor with his stockinged feet. He had pushed his stool near to the corrugated wall, and tilted it back so that he was poised on two of its three legs. His eyes wandered round the little room critically. Spoon and basin on the shelf; prison regulations varnished a dull yellow, above these; bed neatly folded ... he nodded slowly, still whistling. Above the bed and a little to the left was a small window of toughened glass, admitting daylight but affording, by reason of its irregular texture, no view of the world without. On a shelf over the bed was a Bible, a Prayer Book, and a dingy library book. He made a grimace at the book; it was a singularly dull account of a singularly dull lady missionary who had spent twenty years in North Borneo without absorbing more of the atmosphere of that place than that it “was very hot,” and further that native servants could be on occasion “very trying.” Amber was never fortunate with his library books. Five years ago, when he had first seen the interior of one of His Majesty’s gaols, he had planned a course of study embracing Political Economy and the Hellenic Drama, and had applied for the necessary literature for the prosecution of his studies. He had been “served out” with an elementary Greek grammar and _Swiss Family Robinson_, neither of which was noticeably helpful. Fortunately the term of imprisonment ended before he expected; but he had amused himself by translating the adventures of the virtuous Swiss into Latin verse, though he found little profit in the task, and abandoned it.