as smoke visible, far away to the
south-west, but what it meant was impossible to say. Then she, for her
part, told him what she had seen. He looked surprised, even startled,
and the next moment strove to conceal it.

"Are you dead sure your imagination wasn't playing tricks with you,
Nidia? When one is alone in a place like this for hours at a time one's
imagination will turn anything into shape. I have more than once blazed
at a stump in the dusk, when my mind has been running upon bucks."

"But my mind wasn't running upon bucks, nor yet upon tall old men with
long white beards," returned Nidia, sweetly. "But the face! oh, it was
too awful in its expression. I don't believe the thing was of this
earth."

"I expect it's some one in the same boat as ourselves." And John Ames
lighted his pipe--for he had obtained a stock of tobacco from Shiminya's
store-hut as well as matches--and sat silent. The prospect of falling
in with another fugitive was anything but welcome. It would not even
add to their safety, rather the reverse, for it was sure to mean two
skippers in one ship. Such a fugitive too, as Nidia had described this
one to look like, would prove anything but an acquisition. But--was
that all?

No, not quite. He was forced to own to himself that he had no desire to
hurry the end of this idyllic and primitive state of existence,
certainly not at any price less than Nidia's entire safety. He would
have welcomed a strong patrol, though with mingled feelings. He
certainly would not welcome at all the appearance of a fellow refugee,
which would end the idyll, without the compensating element of rescue.

"He had no gun, you say?" he went on.

"No. At least, I don't think so, or I should have seen it. What can it
have been?"

"As I say, some one in the same boat as ourselves. He'll be walking up
to our camp directly. And--I would rather he didn't."

"Would you?"

"Wouldn't you?"

Nidia laughed.

"I believe I would. But what if it is some poor wretch who is lost?
Oughtn't we to try to help him?"

"At our own risk? Your description of this individual does not make one
precisely yearn for his society, Nidia. Indeed, I gather from it that
we should not be at all likely to get on, and I never heard that two
skippers in one ship tended to enhance the safety of that craft. On the
whole, I think we will leave the interesting stranger to his own
devices. If, as you surmise, he really is off his