eavier while
you stop. I want to dump him and be done with the job. Guess I've
had enough."

Splashing and stumbling, they went forward and when they struggled up the
bank Kit wiped his wet face. For a moment or two he had thought the men
would drop their load and as it jolted, vague and black, on their
shoulders, the creaking of the poles had jarred his nerves. He was going
to keep his promise, but he sympathized with the man who had had enough.

After they left the creek, the road got very bad and in places vanished
in belts of swamp. They sank in mud and stagnant water and no light
pierced the daunting gloom, but it was not hard to keep the proper line,
because one could not enter the jungle without a cutlass to clear a path.
At length, when the men were exhausted, the trees got thinner and the
moonlight shining through touched the front of a ruined building. The
rest was indistinct, but the building was large and had evidently
belonged to a sugar or coffee planter. The sailors stopped and Kit
studied a gap in the wall.

The gap did not look inviting and there were, no doubt, snakes and
poisonous spiders inside, but he could go no farther and the broken walls
offered some protection. Perhaps Kit was moved by an atavistic fear of
the dark forest, and he owned that he was influenced by the civilized
man's longing for the shelter of a house. They went in, and after putting
down the coffin in a room where vines crawled about the ruined wall, the
sailors entered the next. One frankly stated that they wanted to get away
from the coffin; Kit could stop and watch it if he liked, but it bothered
them to have the thing about.

Kit let them go, and sitting down in a corner among the rubbish lighted a
cigar. A moonbeam rested on the opposite wall and the room was not dark.
Some light came in through holes, although there was impenetrable gloom
beyond the door by which the men had gone. He could see the wet leaves of
the vines, and the black coffin, covered by the flag. But he was not
afraid of it; the man who lay there had been his friend and claimed the
fulfilment of his promise.

At the same time, it was soothing to hear the sailors' voices, until they
got faint and stopped. Afterwards the silence was burdensome, although a
small creature began to rustle in the wall. Kit did not know if it was a
snake or a spider, and was too tired to feel disturbed. By and by his
cigar fell from his mouth. He picked it up, but it fell ag