-Hang it all! Look at the moon!"

"Yes; I am looking," sighed Minnie. "I've watched it many a time since
I have been in hiding, and I never thought to look upon it peacefully
again. Oh Archie! go on talking to me. Tell me more about Sir Charles,
and what you have all been going through at the station."

"Can't. It would take a month."

"Oh! do tell me something."

"Breaking our hearts about you, then--everybody in the place. Even poor
old Mother Smithers sat down and cried like a child; didn't she, Pete?"

"Gugg!" said the lad, out of the darkness. "Can you get at your knife,
Mr Archie? Mine's turned into a screw-driver, and I want to help this
nig--Malay gentleman to cut sticks."

"Here you are, Pete," said Archie, after a hard struggle to get his hand
into the pocket of his overall, and a harder struggle still to get it
back with the knife.

"Thankye--gugg--sir! Blest if I don't believe I'm going to have a
cold!" And the cutting and rustling of thick, leafy branches went on.

"Now, Minnie, tell me, what do they mean to do?"

"Yes," said the girl quickly. "Dula told me--she can say a few words in
English, and I know a few Malay sentences as well, so that we managed to
understand one another--she said her husband thought he could get the
boat down to the foot of our garden in the darkness, and then we could
all carry baskets of fruit, and so pass through the Malays to a spot
where we could make a dash for the Residency, where we should be safe,
if some of the soldiers didn't shoot us down."

"Ah," said Archie slowly, "you needn't be afraid of that, Minnie."

"What's the matter?" cried the girl sharply.

"Oh, nothing. I am only very wet."

"You are trying to hide something, Archie," said Minnie earnestly. "You
called me sister a few minutes ago."

"Well," he said sharply, "that's what you are to me."

"Then is it brotherly to keep something back?"

"Oh, all right, then," said the lad. "It was only because I didn't want
to give you more troubles to think about."

"What is it, then? I know: Sir Charles is wounded, or perhaps--"

"No, no. He's been knocked about, like the rest of us. I was keeping
it back that our men haven't got a cartridge among them left to fire.
Pegg and I were at the bungalow last night to smuggle out your uncle's
double gun and the cartridges, and we had got in here to wait till night
came again before we landed and tried to make our way back to the
Residency."