o England in the Ophir!" the woman answered.

Then Trent began to feel that, after all, the struggle of his life was
only beginning.

CHAPTER XXVIII

It was then perhaps that Trent fought the hardest battle of his life.
The start was made with only a dozen Kru boys, Trent himself, stripped
to the shirt, labouring amongst them spade in hand. In a week the
fishing boats were deserted, every one was working on the road. The
labour was immense, but the wages were magnificent. Real progress was
made and the boy's calculations were faultless. Trent used the cable
freely.

"Have dismissed Cathcart for incompetence--road started--progress
magnificent," he wired one week, and shortly afterwards a message
came back--"Cathcart cables resigned--scheme impossible--shares
dropping--wire reply."

Trent clenched his fist, and his language made the boy, who had never
heard him violent, look up in surprise. Then he put on his coat and
walked out to the cable station.

"Cathcart lies. I dismissed him for cowardice and incompetence. The
road is being made and I pledge my word that it will be finished in six
months. Let our friends sell no shares."

Then Trent went back and, hard as he had worked before, he surpassed it
all now. Far and wide he sent ever with the same inquiry--for labour and
stores. He spent money like water, but he spent from a bottomless purse.
Day after day Kru boys, natives and Europeans down on their luck, came
creeping in. Far away across the rolling plain the straight belt of
flint-laid road-bed stretched to the horizon, one gang in advance
cutting turf, another beating in the small stones. The boy grew thin and
bronzed, Trent and he toiled as though their lives hung upon the work.
So they went on till the foremost gang came close to the forests, beyond
which lay the village of Bekwando.

Then began the period of the greatest anxiety, for Trent and the boy and
a handful of the others knew what would have sent half of the natives
flying from their work if a whisper had got abroad. A few soldiers were
drafted down from the Fort, arms were given out to all those who could
be trusted to use them and by night men watched by the great red fires
which flared along the path of their labours. Trent and the boy took it
by turns to watch, their revolvers loaded by their side, and their eyes
ever turned towards that dark line of forest whence came nothing but the
singing of night birds and the calling of wild ani