and something for you," said Lingard, cheerily.

Jorgenson shook his head.

"That's the worst of all," he said with slow emphasis. "That's the
end. I came to them from the other side of the earth and they took me
and--see what they made of me."

"What place do you belong to?" asked Lingard.

"Tromso," groaned out Jorgenson; "I will never see snow again," he
sobbed out, his face in his hands.

Lingard looked at him in silence.

"Would you come with me?" he said. "As I told you, I am in want of a--"

"I would see you damned first!" broke out the other, savagely. "I am
an old white loafer, but you don't get me to meddle in their infernal
affairs. They have a devil of their own--"

"The thing simply can't fail. I've calculated every move. I've guarded
against everything. I am no fool."

"Yes--you are. Good-night."

"Well, good-bye," said Lingard, calmly.

He stepped into his boat, and Jorgenson walked up the jetty. Lingard,
clearing the yoke lines, heard him call out from a distance:

"Drop it!"

"I sail before sunrise," he shouted in answer, and went on board.

When he came up from his cabin after an uneasy night, it was dark yet. A
lank figure strolled across the deck.

"Here I am," said Jorgenson, huskily. "Die there or here--all one. But,
if I die there, remember the girl must eat."

Lingard was one of the few who had seen Jorgenson's girl. She had a
wrinkled brown face, a lot of tangled grey hair, a few black stumps
of teeth, and had been married to him lately by an enterprising young
missionary from Bukit Timah. What her appearance might have been once
when Jorgenson gave for her three hundred dollars and several brass
guns, it was impossible to say. All that was left of her youth was a
pair of eyes, undimmed and mournful, which, when she was alone, seemed
to look stonily into the past of two lives. When Jorgenson was near
they followed his movements with anxious pertinacity. And now within the
sarong thrown over the grey head they were dropping unseen tears while
Jorgenson's girl rocked herself to and fro, squatting alone in a corner
of the dark hut.

"Don't you worry about that," said Lingard, grasping Jorgenson's hand.
"She shall want for nothing. All I expect you to do is to look a little
after Belarab's morals when I am away. One more trip I must make, and
then we shall be ready to go ahead. I've foreseen every single thing.
Trust me!"

In this way did the restless shade of Captain H. C. Jo