, like two embattled stags with their horns
inextricably locked. And he waited there, nursing his rifle, watching
out of sullenly feverish eyes, marking each movement of the
passive-faced Binhart.

But Binhart, knowing what he knew, was content to wait.

He was content to wait until the fever grew, and the poisons of the
blood narcotized the dulled brain into indifference, and then goaded it
into delirium. Then, calmly equipping himself for his journey, he
buried the repeating rifle and slipped away in the night, carrying with
him Blake's quinin and revolver and pocket-filter. He traveled
hurriedly, bearing southeast towards the San Juan. Four days later he
reached the coast, journeyed by boat to Bluefields, and from that port
passed on into the outer world, where time and distance swallowed him
up, and no sign of his whereabouts was left behind.

XVII

It was six weeks later that a slender-bodied young Nicaraguan known as
Doctor Alfonso Sedeno (his right to that title resulting from four
years of medical study in Paris) escorted into Bluefields the flaccid
and attenuated shadow of Never-Fail Blake. Doctor Sedeno explained to
the English shipping firm to whom he handed over his patient that the
Senor Americano had been found in a dying condition, ten miles from the
camp of the rubber company for which he acted as surgeon. The Senor
Americano was apparently a prospector who had been deserted by his
partner. He had been very ill. But a few days of complete rest would
restore him. The sea voyage would also help. In the meantime, if the
shipping company would arrange for credit from the hotel, the matter
would assuredly be put right, later on, when the necessary despatches
had been returned from New York.

For three weeks of torpor Blake sat in the shadowy hotel, watching the
torrential rains that deluged the coast. Then, with the help of a
cane, he hobbled from point to point about the town, quaveringly
inquiring for any word of his lost partner. He wandered listlessly
back and forth, mumbling out a description of the man he sought,
holding up strangers with his tremulous-noted inquiries, peering with
weak and watery eyes into any quarter that might house a fugitive. But
no hint or word of Binhart was to be gleaned from those wanderings, and
at the end of a week he boarded a fruit steamer bound for Kingston.

His strength came back to him slowly during that voyage, and when he
landed at Kingston h