, "Stop! That's enough."

Hatteras, however, continued. He appeared to have forgotten Walker's
presence. He told the story to himself, for his own amusement, as a
child will, and here and there he laughed and the mere sound of his
laughter was inhuman. He only came to a stop when he saw Walker hold
out to him a cocked and loaded revolver.

"Well?" he asked. "Well?"

Walker still offered him the revolver.

"There are cases, I think, which neither God's law nor man's law seems
to have provided for. There's your wife you see to be considered. If
you don't take it I shall shoot you myself now, here, and mark you I
shall shoot you for the sake of a boy I loved at school in the old
country."

Hatteras took the revolver in silence, laid it on the table, fingered
it for a little.

"My wife must never know," he said.

"There's the pistol. Outside's the swamp. The swamp will tell no
tales, nor shall I. Your wife need never know."

Hatteras picked up the pistol and stood up.

"Good-bye, Jim," he said, and half pushed out his hand. Walker shook
his head, and Hatteras went out on to the verandah and down the steps.

Walker heard him climb over the fence; and then followed as far as the
verandah. In the still night the rustle and swish of the undergrowth
came quite clearly to his ears. The sound ceased, and a few minutes
afterwards the muffled crack of a pistol shot broke the silence like
the tap of a hammer. The swamp, as Walker prophesied, told no tales.
Mrs. Hatteras gave the one explanation of her husband's disappearance
that she knew and returned brokenhearted to England. There was some
loud talk about the self-sacrificing energy, which makes the English a
dominant race, and there you might think is the end of the story.

But some years later Walker went trudging up the Ogowe river in Congo
Francais. He travelled as far as Woermann's factory in Njole Island
and, having transacted his business there, pushed up stream in the
hope of opening the upper reaches for trade purposes. He travelled for
a hundred and fifty miles in a little stern-wheel steamer. At that
point he stretched an awning over a whale-boat, embarked himself, his
banjo and eight blacks from the steamer, and rowed for another fifty
miles. There he ran the boat's nose into a clay cliff close to a Fan
village and went ashore to negotiate with the chief.

There was a slip of forest between the village and the river bank, and
while Walker was still dodgin