ing him. Gripping in his right hand the pistol he
had brought as a precaution, and with the left loosening his sword in its
scabbard, he faced round with his back to the wall of a shed in which
Angria's ropes were made, and waited, listening intently. But the sound,
slight as it was, had ceased. Possibly it had been made by some animal,
though that seemed scarcely likely: the noise and the glare from the
burning buildings must surely have scared away all the animals in the
neighborhood. Finding that the sound was not repeated, he went on again.
Some minutes later, his ears on the stretch, he fancied he caught the
same soft furtive tread: but when he stopped and listened and heard
nothing, he believed that he must have been mistaken, and set it down as
an echo of his own excitement.

Stepping warily, he picked his way through the darkness, faintly
illuminated by the distant glow of the conflagration. He skirted the
dockyard, and drew nearer to the walls of the courtyard surrounding the
fort, remembering how, nearly twelve months before, he had come almost
the same way from the jetty with the decoy message from Captain Barker.
Then he had been a source of amusement to crowds of natives as he passed
on his way to the palace; now the spot was deserted, and but for the
noises that reached him from distant quarters he might have thought
himself the sole living creature in that once populous settlement.

He had now reached the outer wall, which was separated from the fort only
by the wide compound dotted here and there with palm trees. It was clear
that no force, whether of the Pirate's men or of Ramaji Punt's, held the
ground between the shore and the fort. All the fighting men had without
doubt been withdrawn within the walls. His mission was accomplished.

It had been his intention to make his way back by a shorter cut along the
outer wall, by the west side of the dockyard, until he reached the shore
near the jetty. But standing for a moment under the shade of a palm tree,
he hesitated to carry out his plan, for the path he meant to follow must
be lit up along its whole course by a double glare: from the blazing
buildings inside the fort, and from the burning gallivats in the dockyard
and harbor.

He was on the point of retracing his steps when, looking over the low
wall towards the fort, he saw two dark figures approaching, moving
swiftly from tree to tree, as if wishing to escape observation. It was
too late to mov