only the gentlest ripple disturbed the placid
water of the sheltered lagoon. Overhead the broad leaves of the
coco-palms, towering above the darker green of the surrounding
vegetation, drooped languidly to the calm of the coming night, and great
crested grey and purple-plumaged pigeons lit with crooning note upon
their perches to rest.

As he lay there, lazily enjoying the beauty of the scene, the soldier
heard the loud, hoarse note and whistling and clapping of a hornbill,
and, turning his head, he saw the huge-beaked, ugly bird, rising in
alarm from one of the vine-covered boulders of coral which stood between
the path and high-water mark not thirty yards away, and at the same
moment he caught a gleam of something bright that seemed to move amid
the dense green tangle that covered the rock; and then a man's head and
shoulders appeared for a second in full view. His back was turned
to Watts, who now saw, with a vague feeling of wonder, that he was
kneeling, and peering cautiously out upon the path below. Further along
Watts could see his master, now within a hundred feet of the boulder,
and walking very quickly. Then an exclamation of horror broke from
him as the kneeling man slowly rose, and pointed his musket full at
Channing; but ere the treacherous hand could pull the trigger, the
Marine had levelled his piece and fired; without a cry the man spun
round, and then pitched headlong to the ground at Channing's feet.

"My God, sir!" panted Watts, as a few seconds later he stood beside his
master, who was gazing with stupefied amazement at the huddled-up figure
of Armand Le Mescam, who lay with his face turned upward, and a dark
stream trickling from his mouth, "I was only just in time. He had you
covered at ten paces when I fired."

Le Mescam never spoke again. The shot had struck him in the back and
passed through his chest. As the two men bent over him, a woman carrying
a child burst through the jungle near them, sank exhausted on her knees
beside the dead man, and then fainted.

*****

There was much excitement when the last boat returned to the _Triton_
pulling as her crew had never pulled before. Then there was a rush of
pig-tailed bluejackets to the gangway, as a murmuring whisper ran along
the decks that the "soger officer was comin' aboard holdin' a woman in
his arms," and the news was instantly conveyed to the captain, who
was that evening dining with his officers, with the result that as the
cutter ran