elhouse silvered
and mellowed. The twin wire cables stretching back to the tow became
two glistening silver ropes. At their ends, cavernous gloomy and grimy
despite the moonlight, wallowed the high bulky hull of the ditcher's
scow.

To Roger Payne, standing beside White in the little wheelhouse, the
mournful chuckle of the Southern nightingale, as it sounded time after
time from the cavernous darkness of the jungle shore seemed to strike
at him personally with a note of knowing mockery. The weirdness and
the elusiveness of the scene seemed the inevitable ending of the
strange day. On the rippling water the moonbeams twinkled like silvery
fairy sprites at play; and in the junglelike woods on the shores yawned
great caverns of darkness, their evil suggestiveness only heightened by
the bars of light shooting down through the matted leaves.

Back on the scow a sleepless negro, lying face up to the moonlight,
began to croon weirdly.

"What in the devil do you call that?" asked Roger.

White listened, his head to one side.

"Haiti nigger--French patois," was his reply. "There; catch the
'_mom'selle_'? Haiti nigger singing."

He reached down and picked up a bolt.

"Haiti negro?" said Roger, puzzled. "How did he get in that gang?"

"Oh, they drift over once in a while." White was measuring the
distance to the scow.

The bolt hummed through the air, struck the ditcher's shovels with a
clang and splashed into the water.

"Missed!" growled White. "Shut up, you Sam. This ain't no voodoo
outfit."

"Voodoo!" Roger laughed mirthlessly. "That would be the finishing
touch."

"How come?" said White, puzzled.

"Do you happen to know Mr. Garman, White?"

"I was 'specting you to ask that, Mr. Payne," was the drawled reply.
"I got this to say: I know Garman, but that's all. I dig ditches for
my living. I dig 'em fast and I dig 'em good; and--and that's all I'm
up here for, one way or 'nother."

"Right! and the faster you dig 'em, the better it will suit me."

"Me, too," was the earnest reply.

Roger looked at the man sharply.

"Why? Don't you like the job?"

"The job's all right. I've said I'd dig 'em, and I'll dig 'em fast.
But the quicker I get done, and the quicker I get my outfit pointed
downstream again, and the quicker I'm out of this river, the better
suited I'll be. That's all I'm saying."

Roger laughed grimly.

"You talk like you'd had dealings with Garman before, White?"

"That's all