_A prime lot of raw material. Why [do?] people always lie about
niggers? Unspoiled [part illegible] the makings. Their orators told
me in dumb show [words missing] behind the hills [lines
missing].... Wonderful!_

Wonderful, he says. Wonderful what? Chances, perhaps. Opportunities.
Possibilities. Certainly nobody else ever had such as lay before Jim
Albro if he could have won free to take them, as a conqueror, as a god.
Was he dreaming even then of empire? Had he had a glimpse into the
meaning of Papua that struck fire to his roving and restless soul? Had
he fallen enamored of the sphinx, and had she drawn the veil for him? It
may be. The fact stands that, fevered and tortured as he was, burning
with thirst and pain, he discovered something capable of rousing that
cry from him. We hear the cry, and that is all we hear--nearly.

... _suppose I should take a hand at this dumb show myself. I could
do it. I know I could. Am going to trust old Gum-eye. And
afterward_....

Peters looked up from the last page.

"Well?" said Jeckol impatiently.

"That's the end," announced Peters.

I cannot say what the breathless group of us had been expecting.
Possibly the first-hand memoir of a miracle would have satisfied us, or
the harrowing confessions and last wishes of the moribund. But so
natural and unfanciful a thing as a full stop to the tension left us
stupefied. We felt aggrieved, too, as if the author should have
postponed his business long enough to let us know whether he was dead or
not.

"It can't be!" cried Jeckol, all abroad. "How could it end there? What
happened to him? Where is he?"

Peters swung his gaze around the vacant clearing and the impenetrable
palisade of the forest.

"This was written three months ago, remember," he said.

"But he had a plan," insisted Jeckol. "He surely had a plan. He says he
was going to do something. He'd found a friend he could trust. What
next?"

"That friend must ha' failed him."

Cap'n Bartlet shook himself like one awaking. "No friend would have
failed him," he said deliberately. "And--you're forgetting that ship boy
again."

* * * * *

Once more, with a rattled oath, Peters pounced on the unfortunate Kakwe,
quailing beside him. Once more he brought to bear the persuasion he best
knew how to use; and once more the black boy submitted, wholly, and
showed. He had nothing to tell. He could throw no ligh