ge and the path there was nothing to be
seen; but when I turned inland it's a wonder to me I didn't drop. There,
coming right up out of the desert and the bad bush--there, sure enough,
was a devil-woman, just as the way I had figured she would look. I saw
the light shine on her bare arms and her bright eyes, and there went out
of me a yell so big that I thought it was my death.

"Ah! No sing out!" says the devil-woman, in a kind of a high whisper.
"Why you talk big voice? Put out light! Ese he come."

"My God Almighty, Uma, is that you?" says I.

"_Ioe_,"[5] says she. "I come quick. Ese here soon."

"You come alone?" I asked. "You no 'fraid?"

"Ah, too much 'fraid!" she whispered, clutching me. "I think die."

"Well," says I, with a kind of a weak grin, "I'm not the one to laugh at
you, Mrs. Wiltshire, for I'm about the worst scared man in the South
Pacific myself."

She told me in two words what brought her. I was scarce gone, it seems,
when Fa'avao came in, and the old woman had met Black Jack running as
hard as he was fit from our house to Case's. Uma neither spoke nor
stopped, but lit right out to come and warn me. She was so close at my
heels that the lantern was her guide across the beach, and afterwards,
by the glimmer of it in the trees, she got her line up hill. It was only
when I had got to the top or was in the cellar that she wandered Lord
knows where! and lost a sight of precious time, afraid to call out lest
Case was at the heels of her, and falling in the bush, so that she was
all knocked and bruised. That must have been when she got too far to the
southward, and how she came to take me in the flank at last and frighten
me beyond what I've got the words to tell of.

Well, anything was better than a devil-woman, but I thought her yarn
serious enough. Black Jack had no call to be about my house, unless he
was set there to watch; and it looked to me as if my tomfool word about
the paint, and perhaps some chatter of Maea's had got us all in a clove
hitch. One thing was clear: Uma and I were here for the night; we
daren't try to go home before day, and even then it would be safer to
strike round up the mountain and come in by the back of the village, or
we might walk into an ambuscade. It was plain, too, that the mine should
be sprung immediately, or Case might be in time to stop it.

I marched into the tunnel, Uma keeping tight hold of me, opened my
lantern, and lit the match. The first length of it