"How long is it before the doctor says we shall be fit to travel?" said Warwick, wandering from the point. "Three weeks at farthest. I vote we go on the scout for Massinger. Can't leave him in the tents of the whatsynames--Amorites or something. Dance at his wedding if we can do nothing else." "I'll see it out," said Warwick. "So we will, dear boy," said Mr. Slyde. "Have Ngarara's scalp. Revival of ancient customs. Must have rational amusement now the war's over." What did really happen to Massinger was this. He felt himself struck under the right shoulder from behind by a hard blow as from a stone, such being the sensation of a bullet-wound from undoubted personal evidence. Before he had turned round to see who had given him such a hurt, he felt a queer faintness, and noticed a stream of blood running down his breast, while the evil face of Ngarara, lit up with revengeful triumph, glared at him, partly covered by a huge kawaka tree. Before he could combine the concrete and the abstract sufficiently to formulate a theory, "darkness covered his eyes," and a sudden death rehearsal was in full operation. When he recovered his senses, the night was so far advanced that he glanced upward to the stars with a half-conscious, wondering doubt as to his condition and circumstances. On a rude litter, formed of branches and twisted flax, the bed of grass and fern-leaves beneath him being by no means uncomfortable, he was moving slowly along a forest path, on which four bearers were trying to carry him as smoothly as circumstances would admit of. Two women in native dress walked in front, in one of whom, as she stopped to speak a word to the bearers, he had no difficulty in recognizing Erena. After an answering sentence from the bearer nearest him, she held up her hand, and the little party halted. Coming close to his head, which he was as yet unable to raise, she looked anxiously in his face, and in softest accents said-- "You have awakened." The loss of blood had been great, but by some styptic known to the natives, a people much acquainted with wounds of all degree of severity, it had been arrested. He tried to speak; a faint inarticulate murmur was all the reply he could furnish. He raised himself; but the effort was too painful, and again he became unconscious.