Terry pushed the hardy Hillman to his limit, so that when night fell they were far down among the foothills, the Dark Forest behind them. At daylight the Hillman was proudly mounting homeward, Terry’s belt tightly buckled about his naked trunk. The white man’s last dispensable possession had gone as a reward for the service.

Terry’s joyous urge carried him swiftly, so that in an hour he dropped out of the foothills and into the heat of the jungled lowlands. At noon he climbed Sears’ steps and dropped into a porch chair, his clothes wet with perspiration and torn by contact with brush and thorn, for he had cut straight through the woods.

He had nearly emptied Sears’ water bottle when he saw the big planter coming out of a wonderful growth of hemp. Sears advanced slowly, deep in thought, not looking up till he had mounted the last step. At sight of Terry’s grinning features he recoiled violently, then as the lad rose, he jumped forward to wring his hand furiously. Incapable of coherent speech for several minutes, he at last mastered his vocal cords.

“Man! I thought you were a ghost!” he cried.

Terry sketched his journey into the Hills, and added a brief account of the experiences he and the Major had undergone. Learning that the Major was also safe, Sears called a Bogobo boy and issued instructions that sent him scurrying into one of the Bogobo huts. In a few minutes he returned bearing a small agong and striker.

Under Sears’ directions he hung it upon a pole in front of the house and struck it sharply, again and again. As the deep notes carried out through the still, hot woods Sears motioned to him to desist and turned to Terry.

“Listen!” he exclaimed, intent, his hand on Terry’s shoulder.

In a moment another agong, somewhere close to the south, sounded several times, then another further away, then another, another. Soon the noon stillness of the brush pulsed with the mystic multi-tones of scores of far agongs rung from plantations. Slowly the murmur grew as hundreds of agongs rung by Bogobos in the foothills took up the signal, flooding the hemplands with a glad, bronze chorus.

Sears gripped Terry’s shoulder hard, his eyes brimming.

“That’s the signal we fixed up,” he said. “Welcome home!”

He hovered over Terry, questioning, commenting, incredulous over the Major’s marriage, overjoyed that the quinine he had given Terry had been a factor in his recovery. After lunch Terry borrowed Sears’ best pony and rode away with the planter’s profane benedictions in his ears.

He rode hard, but each familiar landmark, each twist in trail, each sight of river, each expanse of glistening hemp plants, thrilled him with a sense of homecoming. Once, drawing up to cool and water his pony, he caught the sparkle of the sunny Gulf, his nostrils sensed its tang, and with the surge of thanksgiving for the wonderful good fortune that had attended him, he first realized the strain of the past weeks.

Great as was his hurry to reach Davao an hour’s tardiness might mean the loss of the weekly steamer he spent a half-hour with Lindsey, who had ridden out to the trail in the hope of intercepting him. From Lindsey he learned more of the suspense that had hung over the Gulf since his disappearance, the deep anxiety that had spread among the Bogobos and silenced every agong in the foothills.

“And Terry the night the Giant Agong rang up there we most went crazy!”

“We wondered if you heard it, Lindsey.”

“Heard it! Heard it? It reached clear over on the East Coast. Boynton heard it over there.”

Terry pressed on. Three miles below he found Casey was out to meet him, and further on, Burns. At four o’clock he dismounted to greet some Bogobos whom he overtook on the trail. Pushing Sears’ little brown hard, he rode into Davao at five o’clock.

The plaza was crowded. Warned of his coming by the agong chorus, the whole town had turned out, Americans, Filipinos, Chinese, several Spaniards and Moros. The sleepy, dusty square waked to their noisy welcome.

“El Solitario!! El Conquistador del Malabanan!”

Laughing, misty eyed with the warmth of their greeting, he stood in the center of the jostling crowd, shaking hands, calling each white, native and Mongolian by name. Then the Macabebes claimed him and swept him into the privacy of the cuartel.

The jealous Matak had waited till Terry entered the house that his welcome might be unshared.

“Master, I know you come back. All time I know,” he assured him gravely, then looked him over and sent out for the barber. Solemn and efficient as ever, he hustled his master under the shower, helped him into the first starched clothes he had known in five weeks, then went into the kitchen to frighten the cook into greater haste in preparation of dinner.

Barber shears, soap and clean linens restored Terry to his usual nattiness, and he delighted the cook with the zest with which he approached a good dinner after the weeks of the crude and undiversified fare of the Hillmen. Halfway through dinner he beckoned to Matak who stood with folded arms near the kitchen door as matter of fact as though the routine of the household had never been disturbed.

“Matak, when is the mail boat due?”

“She come this morning, go noontime.”

And this was the twenty-fourth. Terry’s keen disappointment was apparent to the watchful Moro.

“Master, you want go to Zamboanga?” he said.

“Yes. I must go as soon as possible, Matak.”

“Take little boat Major come in. She still here.”

Terry jumped up from the dinner table and hurried to the dock and found the speedboat tied up alongside. After a hurried conference with Adams he raced back to the house, where the forehanded Matak was already packing his bags. Terry added a steamer trunk which held his civilian clothes, and as dusk fell master and man stepped aboard the frail craft. Adams was ready. A sharp thrust of foot quickened the engine into life, and they swung in a short circle. Straightening, motors roaring, the stern sucked deep as they sped in swift flight into the south.

From his seat in the stern Terry watched the light fade out of the western sky. The stars invaded the deserted field and dimly outlined the rim of the mountains, a smooth line save where Apo reared high in the west. For a moment the dark peak seemed lonely to him, but he knew that the Major was happy on the pine clad height.... After Ohto’s passing, his own responsibility, the guidance of a child-tribe, would be a heavy one ... a year of that, perhaps, and then but first ... his heart throbbed in vivid realization of all that awaited him in Zamboanga.

Adams hovered about his engines, happy in Terry’s return and in this opportunity to render him service. Matak stretched out on a cross seat, unhappy in the deafening roar of the motors and the rhythmic rise and fall of the speeding craft in the smooth landswells.

As they rounded Sarangani in the middle of the calm moonlit night Adams left the cockpit long enough to cover Terry with a thick blanket, for he had succumbed to the monotonous chorus of the motors and the lull of the bewitching night at sea.

As the calm weather held, Adams steered straight for Zamboanga, putting out to sea in the little motorboat. When Terry woke Basilan was in sight, and at five o’clock they rushed down the tidal current of the Straits and eased into the slip alongside the dock.

Adams, grimy, worn with his long vigil, grinned contentedly under Terry’s warm thanks. Leaving Matak to secure a bullcart to transport his luggage to the Major’s house Terry hurried down the dock and entered the Government Building. The clerks had left for the day but at Terry’s knock the Governor himself threw wide the door.

Profound thankfulness lit Mason’s intellectual face. Grasping Terry’s hand he led him into the office.

“And the Major?” he questioned.

“Well and very happy, sir!”

Keen-eyed, observant, in the moment of welcome the Governor had sensed the new Terry, read the new contentment and confidence manifest in his face and bearing.

In a few minutes Terry had sketched his experiences to his eager auditor. The Governor contented himself with a bare outline, though his eyes glistened. The Hills opened!

“Captain Terry,” he said, “come in to-morrow and tell me the details I will give you the entire morning. To-morrow I will try to tell you how happy I am in your safe return, and in the service you have rendered this Government.”

He rose, beaming with the news it was his privilege to impart.

“You had best run along now, Captain. You will find three anxious friends awaiting you at the Major’s house. They expected to arrive to-morrow but caught the transport and docked yesterday. They will be relieved to see you, for I had to tell them something of the uncertainty we felt regarding your whereabouts. Take my car, and run along!”

And Terry ran along! He flew down the steps and into the automobile and in three minutes was leaping up the stairway into the Major’s house.

Ellis, fatter, somehow absurd in tropic whites, met him at the entrance. Meeting halfway around the world from where they had parted, choking with the end of the dread suspense into which the Governor’s guarded references to Terry’s disappearance had plunged him, Ellis’ big heart thumped in glad relief, but true to the traditions of his lifetime environment he strove to repress it, to appear as casual as though they had been in daily association. Pumping Terry’s hand spasmodically, he measured the ecstatic lad with extravagant care, studied him from crown to heel.

“Dick, how do you do it?” he asked.

“Do what, Ellis?” Terry’s voice was unsteady, too.

“Keep so fit in this oven of a country you’re as hard as nails!”

Terry’s unsteady laugh rang through the big bungalow: “Go on, you fakir you’re crying right now!”

Ellis was. He turned away as Susan rushed out of an adjoining room. Laughing, sobbing, she threw herself upon her brother, held him away to study his appearance, hugged him tighter, pouring out a volume of questions she offered him no opportunity to answer.

Five minutes, and she recovered sufficient reason to catch the significance of Ellis’ vehement gestures toward the second of the row of four bedrooms that opened off the sala. Understanding, she left Terry and followed Ellis into their room, closing the door with a bang intended as a signal to another who listened.

Terry waited, idly stroking the long frond of an air plant that hung in the wide window near where he stood. He wondered, vaguely, that he should be so collected, almost unconcerned, in the face of what awaited him. He saw the door open slowly, wider, then arrest as if the hand on the knob had faltered, and in the instant his self-possession deserted him.

His heart skipped a beat, then accelerated into a heavy thumping that seemed to fill the room with pulsing muffled roar. He moistened his lips as the door moved again, opened wide.

Deane stepped into the room, pale, her wide blue eyes fixed upon him. Slender, rounded, white of arm and throat, she had fulfilled gloriously all of the fair promise of her youth. The rich heritage of womanhood had stamped the softly curved form and the sweetly pensive face. Virginal, she was a mother of men.

He faced her from the window, powerless to move, to speak, but there was that in his eyes that made words unnecessary. Scarce breathing, atremble, she saw the steady gray eyes blaze with a light no other had ever seen, ever would see.

To him she suddenly became unreal, and his mind reverted to another hour when they had stood facing each other. Again she stood before him in the dimlit hall, sobbing, and with the memory came a surging realization of what he might have lost. Unconsciously his last words to her, spoken that Christmas night, sprang brokenly to his lips as he held out his arms:

“Don’t wait, Deane-girl, don’t wait.”

With the sudden deepening of the wistful lines of his mouth she felt a burning rush of tears, and at his words she crossed to him, starry eyed, full red lips aquiver.

There never was a merrier party of four than theirs that night. The questions flew back and forth, answers clipped short by new and more pressing queries. Ellis and Susan were full of the newcomers’ interest in the country, its peoples and customs. Deane, quieter, was interested most in Terry’s work, in Davao, in the story of the Hills. Terry learned of the home friends. Father Jennings, Doctor Mather, Mr. Hunter, a score of others, had sent messages to him. Deane had brought special greetings from his friends on the Southside, and a garish picture of little Richard Terry Ricorro. Half of her larger trunk was filled with silver and linens which had poured in when news of the purpose of her journey had sifted through Crampville.

They were seated on the cool veranda at coffee when the Governor’s car drew up outside the gate, and the chauffeur entered with a note.

Dear Captain Terry:

This car is yours throughout the stay of your will not the
word “family” soon properly cover all three of them?

Please use it freely. I have another entirely suited for my
present needs.

I am very happy to-night, happy in your safe return and in the achievement you have wrought in the name of the Government it is my unmerited privilege to head. And this happiness will be the greater for knowing that you are driving through this glorious evening by the side of her who came so far to join her life with yours.

MASON.

After Terry had read the note aloud Deane added her pleas to his that Susan and Ellis should share the car with them. But they would have none of it. When Susan wavered, Ellis became emphatic.

So the two rode through the tropic night alone, that night and during the glorious evenings that followed for a week. They came to know every village along the ribboned roads, each grove of tall palms, each stretch of beach where smooth highways ran along the coast. She loved the island empire.

They talked as such do talk. The third night, as they rolled through the moonlight down the San Ramon road, he found courage to broach the one subject he had hesitated to mention.

“The Governor wants me to stay a year,” he faltered. “A year up in the Hills.”

She had expected it, was ready. She looked full up at him, and in the soft light her lovely face shone with a strange beauty that humbled him.

“Dick, ‘and thy people shall be my people.’”

They planned their house in the Hills, bought and stored picturesque odds and ends of furniture and fittings; brasses, embroideries, carved teak: and he outlined their honeymoon, which was to be a three-months’ ramble through Japan, the magic lover’s land. They arranged no exact itinerary, just a wandering through Miajima, Kyoto, Nikko, a score of out of the way places.

The mornings he spent with the enthusiastic Governor, planning, discussing. Two tons of supplies went out to the Major the fourth day.

“I put in an assortment of presents for him to give to the Hillmen,” the Governor told him. “And plenty of matches you say they went wild over those he packed up. They will be rich!”

“Governor, the Hillmen are the richest people I have ever seen.”

The Governor was puzzled: “How?”

“They have everything they want. Land for the clearing, a spear, cotton growing wild on trees for such clothes as they wear, meat in the forest, bamboo to cut for shelter against wind and rain, upland rice springing up from barely scratched soils. No social striving, no politics, no taxes. All their wants are satisfied was Croesus as rich?”

“Then you do not believe in civilizing them it means introducing new wants some of which they never will satisfy!”

“Yes, I do, Governor. Civilization means doctors, less suffering, longer life: schools and books: agriculture and better diet: commerce and clothes: churches, and morality and soap!”

The day came when Terry and Deane drove down the San Ramon road where the Governor had preceded them, with Ellis and Susan and a score of the new friends they had made in Zamboanga. Wade had insisted that his spacious bungalow be the scene of their wedding.

Even before he had wrought the house into a fairy-land of palm and cadena and hibiscus the great flowered sweeps of lawn and grove set by the sea had been an ideal setting. Ellis, given his choice of functions, had elected to officiate as best man, so the Governor was happy in giving the bride away. Susan cried, as matrons of honor always do, as she stood with them in the fret-work of shadows under the palms which stirred gently in the off-sea breeze.

None of those most concerned remembered many of the details of the evening, excepting Matak, who met there a young Moro maid and found her fair.

They returned to Zamboanga under enchanting stars, and at nine o’clock they saw Ellis and Susan leave, for they were returning home at once through the Suez, taking steamer first for Borneo and Java. Their own boat left an hour later for Manila, Hong Kong and Nagasaki.

Bidding Ellis good-by, Terry woke from the dream in which he had moved through the afternoon.

“Ellis, do not sell the shoe store. We may be home in a year, and I’ll want to pitch into something.”

“But you’d never fool with that after after all this over here!”

Terry laughed happily: “You never can tell, Ellis. I am learning lessons every day!”

Later, Ellis sought to dry Susan’s tears. “Dick, you’re a fine lover! After all these years of search for things for Deane you failed to give her a wedding gift!”

Terry flushed miserably, for it was true. But Deane thrilled the more happily for the utter absorption in her that had expelled all other things from his mind: she knew that Susan had prompted him to both engagement and wedding rings.

From the pier they watched Ellis and Susan at the rail till the altering course of the brilliantly lighted steamer swept them from sight.

An hour later their own liner carried them northward through the dark Straits.

The deck was deserted, dark. They sat close, in long steamer chairs, watching the mysterious coastline of Mindanao, the shadowy masses of distant mountains that seemed less substance than opaque obstruction of the warm, starry sky. Neither spoke. It was the hour of fullest gratitude, of mutual dedication. The night about them was filled with that humming heard only on a big ship plowing through a calm sea after sundown, the drone of light winds through lofty rigging, the heavy slipping of displaced water, the muffled roar of great engines throbbing in the deep hold.

Eight bells rang the midnight hour. Deane rose, whispering that she had a few things to unpack, bidding him come in ten minutes. Leaning over him, she smoothed his hair lightly with her two hands, curling about her fingers the obstinate scalp lock that always would stand forth from his crown. Reaching up, he took her cool hands and held them tightly against his cheeks. Releasing her, he watched the progress of the buoyant form down the long deck, his soul lit with the flame that warms all mankind.

The moon, in its last quarter, peered over the dark rim of the mountains. When its lower tip cleared, he rose.

When he joined her in their stateroom, her eyes filled happily as she watched the fine, white face.

The fox skin lay on the cabin floor before her berth.