If she could but
reach it--in time!

There was no time to be lost. Like a startled antelope she turned and
fled up the trail in the direction Anderssen had indicated.

From far behind came the sudden shouting of men, the sound of shots,
and then silence. She knew that Anderssen had met the Russian.

A half-hour later she stumbled, exhausted, into a little thatched
village. Instantly she was surrounded by men, women, and children.
Eager, curious, excited natives plied her with a hundred questions, no
one of which she could understand or answer.

All that she could do was to point tearfully at the baby, now wailing
piteously in her arms, and repeat over and over, "Fever--fever--fever."

The blacks did not understand her words, but they saw the cause of her
trouble, and soon a young woman had pulled her into a hut and with
several others was doing her poor best to quiet the child and allay its
agony.

The witch doctor came and built a little fire before the infant, upon
which he boiled some strange concoction in a small earthen pot, making
weird passes above it and mumbling strange, monotonous chants.
Presently he dipped a zebra's tail into the brew, and with further
mutterings and incantations sprinkled a few drops of the liquid over
the baby's face.

After he had gone the women sat about and moaned and wailed until Jane
thought that she should go mad; but, knowing that they were doing it
all out of the kindness of their hearts, she endured the frightful
waking nightmare of those awful hours in dumb and patient suffering.

It must have been well toward midnight that she became conscious of a
sudden commotion in the village. She heard the voices of the natives
raised in controversy, but she could not understand the words.

Presently she heard footsteps approaching the hut in which she squatted
before a bright fire with the baby on her lap. The little thing lay
very still now, its lids, half-raised, showed the pupils horribly
upturned.

Jane Clayton looked into the little face with fear-haunted eyes. It
was not her baby--not her flesh and blood--but how close, how dear the
tiny, helpless thing had become to her. Her heart, bereft of its own,
had gone out to this poor, little, nameless waif, and lavished upon it
all the love that had been denied her during the long, bitter weeks of
her captivity aboard the Kincaid.

She saw that the end was near, and though she was terrified at
contemplation of her lo