so close that he
might not venture to try tricks. He said nothing whatever, but I
noticed that his eye, after roving around the tent, kept returning
again and again to a chop-box that stood near the foot of the bed.

Now I had unpacked that chop-box and repacked it the previous night. I
knew everything it contained--exactly how many cans of plum pudding.
It was the box I had rested my feet on. I felt perfectly sure he knew
as well as I what the box contained, and to suppose he would sit there
planning to recover canned food, however dainty, was ridiculous.

Wherefore it was a safe conclusion he was trying to deceive me as to
his real intention. I put my foot on the box again, and he frowned, as
much as to say I had forestalled his only hope. Pretending to watch
the box and him, I examined every detail of the tent, particularly that
side of it opposite the box, away from where it seemed he wanted me to
look.

The human eye is a highly imperfect piece of mechanism and the human
brain is mostly grayish slush. It was minutes before I detected the
edge of his diary, sticking out from the pocket of Fred's shooting coat
that itself protruded from under the folded blanket on which Fred had
slept. It was nearer to Schillingschen than to me. After watching him
for about fifteen minutes, during which he made a great fuss about his
headache, I was quite sure it was the diary that interested him.

I stooped and extracted it from the coat pocket. The grimace he made
was certainly not due to headache.

"Fred!" I called out, and he and Will came striding in together.

"That diary's the key," I said. "It's important. It holds his
secrets!"

Will was swift to put that to the test.

"What will you offer?" he asked Schillingschen. "We want you to go
back direct to German East. Will you go, if we give you back your
diary?"

Schillingschen blundered into the trap like a buffalo in strange
surroundings.

"Ja wohl!" he answered. "Give me that, and yon shall never see me
again!"

At that Fred threw himself full length on his blanket and took one of
Schillingschen's cigars.

"Of course," he said, "you would give anything for leave to take those
words back! You needn't try to hide the wince--we fully appreciate the
situation! What do you say, you fellows? How about last night's idea?
Who mooted it? Shall we send him back by canoe to German East, with a
guarantee that if he doesn't go we'll hand over diary and him