But, even as he turned, a shriek from the lower brush told that it was too late to save the women from some visible knowledge of what had taken place. They turned and ran back along the ridge. Mary Stuart, reaching for a flower, saw at her feet what she took for a fallen coco-nut, and stooped to pick it up, and then screamed aloud and sat down suddenly with a sick, white face. The others hurried up, Alison Evans and Aunt Jannet Harvey reaching her first. "What is it, dear?" asked Aunt Jannet, and then she saw, and sat down heavily beside her. Alison had her nerves under better control. She had seen little dead bodies before, but the sight of a murdered child is a shock to any woman. Her face was white and rigid, but she had her wits about her also. "Take them all away," she whispered fiercely to Aunt Jannet Harvey, and Aunt Jannet, just needing that spur, scrambled up and gripped Mary Stuart by the shoulder and dragged her away as Jean came running up, asking, "What is it? What's the matter?" "Come away, child!--come away! It is a little murdered baby. Alison is seeing to it, but it is quite dead. Let us get away. Here is the boat and Captain Cathie." Everything was changed as the white boat plunged back across the lagoon to the ship. The men's faces were hard and angry, the women's white and pitiful. Alison Evans wept silently now. She had seen more than the others, and that soft little head, crushed in by one murderous blow against the tree, would haunt her dreams for nights to come. The sun shone as brightly as before, but there was something pitiless in his unwinking glare. The sea was as placid and sparkling as before, but there was a fawning treachery in its very smoothness. The palms behind waved their feathers just as before, but now they were funeral plumes. The very oars no longer chirped merrily in the rowlocks, but croaked in a way that got on the women's nerves. And not one of them spoke till they were safe aboard the ship. "Yes," nodded Blair to Cathie's look of interrogation, "we will go on at once," and the anchor chain rattled up hoarsely, and they went slowly and silently on their way, and left the beautiful island to its dead. "I saw it from the water," said Cathie later to Blair, "and turned to get the ladies away, but I was too late. Did you see anything to give you any hint as to who it was, sir?" "Yes. Peruvians, I should say. There was one yellow man among the dead, and they recruit mostly from these outer islands. Before God, captain, I will put a stop to this kind of work, whatever the cost may be." "We're with you, sir, every man of us. See those men's faces!" And grim and determined enough were the men's faces as they went about their work. For those who had seen had told those who had not seen, and the impression was a deep one.