ness, more formidable, more mysterious, more
exasperating with every hour. Their own powers were ebbing. The naked
savage had yet to give the slightest sign of complaint or weakness.

During the night he had stretched himself out on the platform as before,
and after a time he had slept. Through the hours of darkness and silence
while each of the whites wrestled with despair, this black man had slept
as placidly as a child, with easy, regular breathing. Since then he had
resumed his place aft. And so he remained, unchanged, a fixed fact and a
growing wonder.

The brutal rage of Perroquet, in which he had vented his distorted hate
of the native, had been followed by superstitious doubts.

"Doctor," he said at last, in awed huskiness, "is this a man or a
fiend?"

"It is a man."

"A miracle," put in Fenayrou.

But the doctor lifted a finger in a way his pupils would have
remembered.

"It is a man," he repeated, "and a very poor and wretched example of a
man. You will find no lower type anywhere. Observe his cranial angle,
the high ears, the heavy bones of his skull. He is scarcely above the
ape. There are educated apes more intelligent."

"Ah? Then what?"

"He has a secret," said the doctor.

That was a word to transfix them.

"A secret! But we see him--every move he makes, every instant. What
chance for a secret?"

The doctor rather forgot his audience, betrayed by chagrin and
bitterness.

"How pitiful!" he mused. "Here are we three--children of the century,
products of civilization--I fancy none would deny that, at least. And
here is this man who belongs before the Stone Age. In a set trial of
fitness, of wits, of resource, is he to win? Pitiful!"

"What kind of secret?" demanded Perroquet fuming.

"I cannot say," admitted Dubosc, with a baffled gesture. "Possibly some
method of breathing, some peculiar posture that operates to cheat the
sensations of the body. Such things are known among primitive
peoples--known and carefully guarded--like the properties of certain
drugs, the uses of hypnotism and complex natural laws. Then, again, it
may be psychologic--a mental attitude persistently held. Who knows?....

"To ask him? Useless. He will not tell. Why should he? We scorn him. We
give him no share with us. We abuse him. He simply falls back on his
own expedients. He simply remains inscrutable--as he has always been and
will always be. He never tells those innermost secrets. They are the
means by which