Flora gave her a grateful look. Since she must not criticize Harry, they could not be altogether frank, but she saw Mabel understood. The men they loved had very different temperaments, and Bob would be a useful counterbalance. He was sober and practical: one could trust him. It was hard to own that, in a sense, she could not trust Harry. He was rash, and Flora did not like the stories about the Wyndhams who had not come back. However, Bob was going, and she imagined she owed Mabel much. "I like Bob," she said. "I expect it cost you something to send him with Harry." "He wanted to go." Flora put her hand in the other's arm. "But you might have stopped him." "He's Harry's friend," said Mabel. "I am yours. After all, that counts for something, but we won't talk about it now. Your promising to marry Harry has drawn us closer. It's an extra tie, because all Bob's friends are mine." The tug's whistle shrieked as she swung across the tide to the landing stage and Flora looked down the river. In the distance, where granite walls and warehouses got small and indistinct, the African boat melted into the smoke and mist. Flora felt strangely forlorn and half afraid. CHAPTER IV THE MAN WHO VANISHED Moonlight glittered on the West African river and it was very hot; the air was heavy, humid, and tainted by miasmatic vapors. Inside the lonely factory, moisture dripped from the beams and the big bare room that opened on the veranda smelt of mildew. Across the river, tangled mangroves loomed through drifting mist that hid the banks of mud about their long, arched roots. Wyndham's schooner, _Columbine_, rode in midstream, her tall masts and the graceful sweep of her rail cutting black against the silver light. Somebody on board was singing a Kroo paddling song with a strange monotonous air. In the distance one heard the rumble of heavy surf. The factory was old and ruinous and the agent's hair was going white. He sat opposite Wyndham, at the end of a table about which documents were scattered; a cocktail jug and some glasses occupied the middle. Ellams was haggard and his skin was a jaundiced yellow. Marston lounged in a deck chair, with the perspiration running down his face, and smoked a cigarette. "I think I have told you all you want to know, and I'm willing to give up my post," Ellams remarked. "Indeed, I'm beginning to feel I'm too old for the job. Few white men have lived as long in the fever swamps; as a rule an agent's run was very short when I first came out. We didn't bother about mosquitoes then. The tropical-diseases people hadn't discovered the mischievous habits of _anopheles_." "You were here with my uncle, I think?" said Wyndham. "I was with him for a year or two," Ellams answered, in a reminiscent tone. "A strange man, in some ways! I expect it's long since you saw him?" "He came to England when I was a boy."