p night-silence a few
hours back he had fancied that he had heard the faint thunder of the
sea. If this were indeed so, it would be but a short distance now to the
end of his journey. With dull, glazed eyes and clenched hands, he reeled
on. A sort of stupor had laid hold of him, but through it all his brain
was working, and he kept steadily to a fixed course. Was it the sea in
his ears, he wondered, that long, monotonous rolling of sound, and there
were lights before his eyes--the lights of Buckomari, or the lights of
death!

They found him an hour or two later unconscious, but alive, on the
outskirts of the village.

Three days later two men were seated face to face in a long wooden
house, the largest and most important in Buckomari village.

Smoking a corn-cob pipe and showing in his face but few marks of the
terrible days through which he had passed was Scarlett Trent--opposite
to him was Hiram Da Souza, the capitalist of the region. The Jew--of Da
Souza's nationality it was impossible to have any doubt--was coarse and
large of his type, he wore soiled linen clothes and was smoking a black
cigar. On the little finger of each hand, thickly encrusted with dirt,
was a diamond ring, on his thick, protruding lips a complacent smile.
The concession, already soiled and dog-eared, was spread out before
them.

It was Da Souza who did most of the talking. Trent indeed had the
appearance of a man only indirectly interested in the proceedings.

"You see, my dear sir," Da Souza was saying, "this little concession
of yours is, after all, a very risky business. These niggers have
absolutely no sense honour. Do I not know it--alas--to my cost?"

Trent listened in contemptuous silence. Da Souza had made a fortune
trading fiery rum on the Congo and had probably done more to debauch the
niggers he spoke of so bitterly than any man in Africa.

"The Bekwando people have a bad name--very bad name. As for any sense of
commercial honour--my dear Trent, one might as well expect diamonds to
spring up like mushrooms under our feet."

"The document," Trent said, "is signed by the King and witnessed by
Captain Francis, who is Agent-General out here, or something of the
sort, for the English Government. It was no gift and don't you think
it, but a piece of hard bartering. Forty bearers carried our presents to
Bekwando and it took us three months to get through. There is enough in
it to make us both millionaires.

"Then why," Da Souza