g suddenly became clear to him. "The
up-river trip?"

She nodded slowly, anxiously. "And twice--means death, also, Peter!"

He tried to drag himself erect, tried to twist his head, and he sank
back with a bitter groan. "You drugged me!"

"There was no other way. I could not let you go into the night--into
death!"

A bitter smile came to his white lips. "I am quite powerless?"

"I--I am afraid you are, Peter."

"If I decide yes--or if I decide no--how can I defend myself?"

"You are quite helpless," she confessed in a whisper. "No. You cannot
defend yourself." Her expression showed an inward struggle. "You are
in my hands. You are in my arms! Yes! What have you to say?"

The smile of bitterness came and flickered again over his pale lips.
He tried to throw back his head, but the redness was settling down upon
him again. "What shall I say?" he muttered. "I say--two lights! I
say--no! _No_!"

The fingers at his neck were icy. Gently he was lowered to the
pavement.

Romola had taken the candle down from the rafter, and she went swiftly
to the tiny window. She raised her hand, once, then pinched out the
flame between her fingers.

CHAPTER VIII

Foggy consciousness. A roaring like that of the ocean on a rockbound
coast. He seemed to be floating in a medium of ice. Once his dragging
arm scraped a wet, slippery timber. The journey seemed to be taking
him down--down--into the earth, and slowly he began to rise.

Gradually he became aware of innumerable pinpoints of light in a shield
of purple darkness. These might have been stars, or the lights of a
great city. Next he heard the low gurgle of water, as of a stream
splashing through wilderness.

He felt very faint, but the vapor clouds in his brain were beginning to
clear away. Next he was badly shaken up, yet he was conscious of no
pain. Remorseful eyes stared into his from the face of a candle-white
spectre, and in the background a tall, half-naked giant swayed from
side to side in a pink glow.

Where, then, were Jen and his Chinese?

He vaguely sensed the dawn; it came to him as an old experience, a sort
of groping memory out of a gloriously romantic past. And the swaying
giant he decided in a moment of rare clarity to be a sampan coolie.

The pink glow increased, became pale yellow, while a deep blueness
figured in it. A swollen sun came and paved a bloody path across a
lake of roiled brown, and the water hissed with a w