Stonor sat down on a grub-box, and, gripping his bursting head between his hands, tried to think. His throbbing blood urged him to gallop instantly in pursuit. They could not have more than two hours’ start of him, and Miles Aroon was better than anything they had in the way of horse-flesh, fresh into the bargain. But a deeper instinct was telling him that a little slow thought in the beginning brings quicker results at the end.

Even with only two hours’ start they might make the village before he overtook them, and Imbrie might get away on the lake. A stern chase with all the hazards of travel in the wilderness might continue for days; Stonor was running short of grub; he must provide for their coming back; above all it was necessary that he get word out of what had happened; Clare’s safety must not depend alone on the one mortal life he had to give her. Hard as it was to bring himself to it, he determined to get in touch with Tole before starting after Imbrie and the Kakisas.

To that end he mounted one of his poorer horses and galloped headlong back through the bush. After ten miles or so, in a little open meadow he came upon the handsome breed boy riding along without a care in the world, hand on hip and “Stetson” cocked askew, singing lustily of Gentille Alouette. Never in his life had Stonor been so glad to see anybody. His set, white face worked painfully; for a moment he could not speak, but only grip the boy’s shoulder. Tole was scared half out of his wits to see his revered idol so much affected.

All the way along Stonor had been thinking what he would do. It would not be sufficient to send a message by Tole; he must write to John Gaviller and to Lambert at the Crossing; one letter would do for both; the phrases were all ready to his pencil. Briefly explaining the situation to Tole, he sat down to his note-book. Two pages held it all; Stonor would have been surprised had he been told that it was a model of conciseness.

“JOHN GAVILLER and Sergeant LAMBERT, R.N.W.M.P.

“While returning with my prisoner Ernest Imbrie, suspected of murder, at a point on the Horse Track six miles from Swan River, a band of Indians from Swan Lake drove off my horses, and while I was away looking for them, rescued my prisoner, and also carried off the two women in my party. Am returning to Swan Lake now with four horses. Suppose that Imbrie reaching there will take to the lake and the upper Swan, as that provides his only means of getting out of the country this way. Suggest that Mr. Gaviller get this through to Lambert regardless of expense. Suggest that Lambert as soon as he gets it might ride overland from the Crossing to the nearest point on the Swan. If he takes one of his folding boats, and takes a man to ride the horses back, he could come down the Swan. I will be coming up, and we ought to pinch Imbrie between the two of us. The situation is a serious one, as Imbrie has the whole tribe of Kakisas under his thumb. He will stop at nothing now; may be insane. The position of the women is a frightful one.

“MARTIN STONOR.”

Stonor took Tole’s pack-horse with its load of grub, and the breed tied his bed and rations for three days behind his saddle. Stonor gripped his hand.

“So long, kid! Ride like hell. It’s the most you can do for me.”

Eight hours later, Stonor, haggard with anxiety and fatigue, and driving his spent horses before him, rode among the tepees of the village beside Swan Lake. That single day had aged him ten years. His second coming was received with a significant lack of surprise. The Indians were ostentatiously engaged at their customary occupations: mending boats and other gear, cleaning guns, etc. Stonor doubted if such a picture of universal industry had ever been offered there. Dismounting, he called peremptorily for Myengeen.

The head man came to him with a certain air of boldness, that slowly withered, however, under the fire that leaped up in the white man’s weary blue eyes. Under his savage inscrutability the signs of fidgets became perceptible. Perhaps he had not expected the trooper to brave him single-handed, but had hoped for more time to obliterate tracks, and let matters quiet down. Many a dark breast within hearing quailed at the sound of the policeman’s ringing voice, though his words were not understood. The one determined man struck more terror than a troop.

“Myengeen, you and your people have defied the law! Swift and terrible punishment awaits you. Don’t think you can escape it. You have carried off a white woman. Such a thing was never known. If a single hair of her head is harmed, God help you! Where is she?”

Myengeen’s reply was a pantomime of general denial.

Stonor marched him back of the tepees where the Kakisas’ horses were feeding on the flat. He silently pointed to their hanging heads and sweaty flanks. Many of the beasts were still too weary to feed: one or two were lying down done for. Stonor pointed out certain peculiarities in their feet, and indicated that he had been following those tracks. This mute testimony impressed Myengeen more than words; his eyes bolted; he took refuge in making believe not to understand.

Stonor’s inability to command them in their own tongue made him feel maddeningly impotent.

“Where is the woman who speaks English?” he cried, pointing to his own tongue.

Myengeen merely shrugged.

Stonor then ordered all the people into their tepees, and such is the power of a single resolute voice that they meekly obeyed. Proceeding from tepee to tepee he called out likely-looking individuals to be questioned out of sight of the others. For a long time it was without result; men and women alike, having taken their cue from Myengeen, feigned not to understand. Such children as he tried to question were scared almost into insensibility. Stonor began to feel as if he were butting his head against a stone wall.

At last from a maiden he received a hint that was sufficient. She was a comely girl with a limpid brown eye. Either she had a soul above the Kakisas or else the bright-haired trooper touched her fancy. At any rate, when he looked in the tepee, where she sat demurely beyond her male relatives, she gave him a shy glance that did not lack humanity. Calling her outside, he put the invariable question to her, accompanied with appropriate signs: where was the white woman?

She merely glanced towards the mouth of the creek where the canoes lay, then looked up the lake. It was sufficient. Stonor gave her a grateful glance and let her go. He never knew her name. That the Kakisas might not suspect her of having betrayed them, he continued his questioning for awhile. Last of all he re-interrogated Myengeen. He did not care if suspicion fell on him.

Stonor coolly picked out the best-looking canoe in the creek, and loaded aboard what he required of his outfit. Myengeen and his men sullenly looked on. The trooper, seeing that a fair breeze was blowing up the lake, cut two poplar poles, and with a blanket quickly rigged mast and sail. When he was ready to start he delivered the rest of his outfit to Myengeen, and left his horses in his care.

“This is government property,” he said sternly. “If anything is lost full payment will be collected.”

He sailed down the creek followed by the wondering exclamations of the Kakisas. Sailing was an unknown art to them, and in their amazement at the sight, like the children they were, they completely forgot the grimness of the situation. Stonor thought: “How can you make such a scatter-brained lot realize what they’re doing!”

Stonor had supposed that Imbrie would take to the lake. On arriving at the brow of the last ridge his first thought had been to search its expanse, but he had seen nothing. Since then various indications suggested that they had between four and five hours’ start of him. He had been delayed on the trail by his pack-horses. The speed he was making under sail was not much better than he could have paddled, but it enabled him to take things easy for a while.

Swan Lake is about thirty miles long. Fully ten miles of it was visible from the start. It is shaped roughly like three uneven links of a chain, and in width it varies from half a mile to perhaps five miles. It seems vaster than it is on account of its low shores which stretch back, flat and reedy, for miles. Here dwelt the great flocks of wild geese or “wavies” that gave both lake and river their names.

As he got out into the lake the wind gradually strengthened behind him, and his canoe was blown hither and yon like an inflated skin on the water. She had no keel, she took no grip of the water, and much of the goodly aid of the wind was vainly measured against the strength of Stonor’s arms as he laboured to keep her before it. When he did get the wind full in his top-heavy sail it blew him almost bodily under. Stonor welcomed the struggle. He was now making much better time than he could have hoped for by his paddle. He grimly carried on.

In order to accommodate the two women and their necessary outfit, Stonor supposed that Imbrie must have taken one of the dug-outs. He did not believe that any of the Kakisas had accompanied the fugitive. The prospect of a long journey would appal them. And Stonor was pretty sure that Mary was not over-working herself at the paddle, so that it was not too much to hope that he was catching up on them at this rate. Thinking of their outfit, Stonor wondered how Imbrie would feed Clare; the ordinary fare of the Kakisas would be a cruel hardship on her. Such are the things one worries about in the face of much more dreadful dangers.

It had been nearly six o’clock before Stonor left Myengeen’s village, and the sun went down while he was still far from the head of the lake. He surveyed the flat shores somewhat anxiously. Nowhere, as far as he could see, was there any promising landing-place. In the end he decided to sail on through the night. As darkness gathered he took his bearings from the stars. With the going-down of the sun the wind moderated, but it still held fair and strong enough to give him good steerage-way. After an hour or two the shores began to close around him. He could not find the outlet of the river in the dark, so he drove into the reeds, and, taking down his sail, supped on cold bread and lake-water and lay down in his canoe.

In the morning he found the river without difficulty. It was a sluggish stream here, winding interminably between low cut banks, edged with dangling grass-roots on the one side and mud-flats on the other. From the canoe he could see nothing above the banks. Landing to take a survey, Stonor beheld a vast treeless bottom, covered with rank grass, and stretching to low piny ridges several miles back on either hand. No tell-tale thread of smoke on the still air betrayed the camp of the man he was seeking.

He resumed his way. Of his whole journey this part was the most difficult trial to his patience. There was just current enough to mock at his efforts with the paddle. He seemed scarcely to crawl. It was maddening after his brisk progress up the lake. Moreover, each bend was so much like the last that he had no sense of getting on, and the invariable banks hemmed in his sight. He felt like a man condemned to a treadmill.

He had been about two hours on the river when he saw a little object floating towards him on the current that instantly caught his eye because it had the look of something fashioned. He paddled to it with a beating heart. It proved to be a tiny raft contrived out of several lengths of stout stick, tied together with strips of rag. On the little platform, out of reach of the water, was tied with another strip a roll of the white outer bark of the birch. Stonor untied it and spread it out on his knee with a trembling hand. It was a letter printed in crooked characters with a point charred in the fire.

WE WELL. HIM NOT HURT CLARE ENY. HIM SCAR OF CRAZEE CLARE SLEEP
BY ME. HIM GOIN CROST /\/\/\/\/\

FROM MARY]

A warm stream forced its way into the trooper’s frozen breast, and the terrible strained look in his eyes relaxed. For a moment he covered his eyes with his arm, though there was none to see. His most dreadful and unacknowledged fear was for the moment relieved. Gratitude filled him.

“Good old Mary!” he thought. “She went to all that trouble just on the chance of easing my mind. By God! if we come through this all right I’ll do something for her!”

“Him scar of crazee,” puzzled him for a while, until it occurred to him that Mary wished to convey that Imbrie let Clare alone because he believed that her loss of memory was akin to insanity. This was where the red strain in him told. All Indians have a superstitious awe of the insane. The sign at the end of the letter was for mountains, of course. The word, no doubt, was beyond Mary’s spelling. What care and circumspection must have gone to the writing and the launching of the note! It must all have been done while Imbrie slept.

Stonor applied himself to his paddle again with a better heart. After two hours more he came to their camping-place of the night before. It was a spot designed by Nature for a camp, with a little beach of clean sand below, and a grove of willow and birch above. Stonor landed to see what tell-tale signs they had left behind them.

He saw that they were in a dug-out: it had left its furrow in the sand where it was pulled up. He saw the print of Clare’s little common-sense boot in the sand, and the sight almost unmanned him; Mary’s track was there too, that he knew well, and Imbrie’s; and to his astonishment there was a fourth track unknown to him. It was that of a small man or a large woman. Could Imbrie have persuaded one of the Kakisas to accompany him? This was all he saw. He judged from the signs that they had about five hours’ start of him.

From this point the character of the country began to change. The river-banks became higher and wooded; there were outcroppings of rock and small rapids. Stonor saw from the tracks alongshore that where the current was swift they had towed the dug-out up-stream, but he had to stick to his paddle. Though he put forth his best efforts all day he scarcely gained on them, for darkness came upon him soon after he had passed the place where they spelled in mid-afternoon.

On the next day in mid-morning he was brought to stand by a fork in the river. There was nothing to tell him which branch to choose, for the current was easy here and the trackers had re-embarked. Both branches were of about equal size: one came from the south-east, one from due east; either might reach to the mountains if it was long enough. Stonor had pondered on the map of that country, but on it the Swan River was only indicated as yet by a dotted line. All that was known of the stream by report was that it rose in the Rocky Mountains somewhere to the north of Fort Cheever, and, flowing in a north-westerly direction, roughly parallel with the Spirit, finally emptied into Great Buffalo Lake. Stonor remembered no forks on the map.

He was about to choose at random, when he was struck by a difference in the colour of the water of the two branches. The right-hand fork was a clear brown, the other greenish with a milky tinge. Now brown water, as everybody knows, comes from swamps or muskegs, while green water is the product of melting snow and ice. Stonor took the left-hand branch.

Shortly afterwards he was rewarded by a sight of the spot where they had made their first spell of the day. Landing, he found the ashes of their fire still warm; they could not have been gone more than an hour. This was an unexpected gain; some accident of travel must have delayed them. Embarking, he bent to his paddle with a renewed hope. Surely by going without a meal himself he ought to come on them before they finished their second spell.

But the river was only half of its former volume now, and the rapids were more brawling, and more tedious to ascend. However, he consoled himself with the thought that if they held him back they would delay the dug-out no less. The river was very lovely on these upper reaches; in his anxiety to get on he scarcely marked that at the moment, but afterwards he remembered its park-like shores, its forget-me-nots and raspberry-blossoms, and the dappled sunlight falling through the aspen-foliage. It was no different from the rivers of his boyhood in a sheltered land, with swimming-holes at the foot of the little rapids: only the fenced fields and the quiet cattle were lacking above the banks, and church-spires in the distant vistas.

Within an hour Stonor himself became the victim of one of the ordinary hazards of river-travel. In a rapid one of his paddles broke in half; the current carried him broadside on a rock, and a great piece of bark was torn from the side of his frail craft. Landing, he surveyed the damage, grinding his teeth with angry disappointment. It meant the loss of all he had so hardly gained on the dug-out.

To find a suitable piece of bark, and spruce-gum to cement it with, required a considerable search in the bush. It then had to be sewed on with needle and thread, the edges gummed, and the gum given time to dry partly, in the heat of the fire. The afternoon was well advanced before he got afloat again, and darkness compelled him to camp in the spot where they had made their second, that is to say, the mid-afternoon, spell.

The next two days, his third and fourth in the river, were without especial incident. The river maintained its sylvan character, though the bordering hills or bench were gradually growing higher and bolder. Stonor, by putting every ounce that was in him into his paddle, slowly gained again on the dug-out. He knew now that Imbrie, irrespective of Mary, had a second paddle to help him. It gave the dug-out an advantage, especially in swift water, that more than neutralized its extra weight.

By evening of the fourth day all signs indicated that he was drawing close to his quarry again. He kept on until forced to stop by complete darkness. On this night the sky was heavily overcast, and it was as dark as a winter’s night. He camped where he happened to be; it was a poor spot, no more than a stony slope among willows. He had done all his necessary cooking during the day, so there was no need to wait for his supper.

The mosquitoes were troublesome, and he put up his tent, hastily slinging it between two trees, and weighing down the sides and the back with a few stones. To his tent he afterwards ascribed the preservation of his life. It was the simplest form of tent, known as a “lean-to,” or, as one might say, merely half a tent sliced along the ridge-pole, with a roof sloping to the ground at the back, and the entire front open to the fire except for a mosquito-bar.

His bed was hard, but he was too weary to care. He lay down in his blanket, but not to achieve forgetfulness immediately; strong discipline was still required to calm his hot impatience. How could he sleep, not knowing perhaps but that one more mile might bring him to his goal? Indeed, Imbrie’s camp might be around the next bend. But he could not risk his frail canoe in the shallow river after dark.

Stonor was on the borderland of sleep when he was suddenly roused to complete wakefulness by a little sound from behind his tent. A woodsman soon learns to know all the normal sounds of night, and this was something different, an infinitely stealthy sound, as of a body dragging itself an inch at a time, with long waits between. It seemed to be slowly making its way around his tent towards the open front.

Now Stonor knew that there was no animal in his country that stalks human prey, and he instantly thought of his two-legged enemy. Quick and noiselessly as a cat he slipped out of his blankets, and rolling his dunnage-bag in his place drew the blanket over it. In the faint light reflected from the embers outside it might be supposed that he still lay there. He then cautiously moved the stones aside, and slipped out under the wall of his tent on the side opposite to that whence the creeping sounds now came.

On hands and knees he crawled softly around the back of his tent, determined to stalk the stalker. He felt each inch of the way in advance, to make sure there was nothing that would break or turn under his weight. He could hear no sounds from the other side now. Rounding the back of his tent, at the corner he lay flat and stuck his head around. At first he could see nothing. The tall trees on the further shore cut off all but the faintest gleam of light from the river. A little forward and to the left of his tent there was a thick clump of willow, making a black shadow at its foot that might have concealed anything. Stonor watched, breathing with open mouth to avoid betraying himself. Little by little he made out a shadowy form at the foot of the willows, a shape merely a degree blacker than its background. He could be sure of nothing.

Then his heart seemed to miss a beat, for against the wan surface of the river he saw an arm raised and a gun point presumably at the dummy he had left under the tent. Oddly enough his shock of horror was not primarily that one should seek to kill him, Stonor; he was first of all appalled at the outrage offered to the coat he wore.

The gun spoke and flame leaped from the barrel. Stonor, gathering himself up, sprang forward on the assassin. At the first touch he recognized with a great shock of surprise that it was a woman he had to deal with. Her shoulders were round and soft under his hands; the grunt she uttered as he bore her back was feminine. He wrenched the gun from her hands and cast it to one side.

When she caught her breath she fought like a mad cat, with every lithe muscle of her body and with teeth and claws too. She was strong; strong and quick as a steel spring. More than once she escaped him. Once she got half-way up the bank; but here he bore her down on her face and locked her arms behind her in a grip she was powerless to break.

Jerking her to her feet one is not too gentle even with a woman who has just tried to murder one he forced her before him back to his tent. Here, holding her with one arm while she swayed and wrenched in her efforts to free herself, he contrived to draw his knife, and to cut off one of the stay-ropes of his tent. With this he bound her wrists together behind her back, and passed the end round a stout trunk of willow. The instant he stood back she flung herself forward on the rope, but the jerk on her arms must have nearly dislocated them. It brought a shriek of pain from her. She came to a standstill, sobbing for breath.

Stonor collected dead twigs, and blew on the embers. In a minute or two he had a bright blaze, and turned, full of curiosity to see what he had got. He saw a breed woman of forty years or more, still, for a wonder, uncommonly handsome and well-formed. The pure hatred that distorted her features could not conceal her good looks. She had the fine straight features of her white forebears, and her dusky cheeks flamed with colour. She bore herself with a proud, savage grace.

More than the woman herself, her attire excited Stonor’s wonder. It was a white woman’s get-up. Her dress, though of plain black cotton, was cut with a certain regard to the prevailing style. She wore corsets strange phenomenon! Stonor had already discovered it before he got a look at her. Her hair had been done on top of her head in a white woman’s fashion, though it was pretty well down now. Strangest of all, she wore gold jewellery; rings on her fingers and drops in her ears; a showy gold locket hanging from a chain around her neck. On the whole a surprising apparition to find on the banks of the unexplored river.

Stonor, studying her, reflected that this was no doubt the woman he had seen with Imbrie at Carcajou Point two months before. The Indians had referred to her derisively as his “old woman.” But it was strange he had heard nothing of her from the Kakisas. She must have been concealed in the very tepee from which Imbrie had issued on the occasion of Stonor’s first visit to the village at Swan Lake. The Indians down the river had never mentioned her. He was sure she could not have lived with Imbrie down there. Where, then, had he picked her up? Where had she been while Imbrie was down there? How had she got into the country anyway? The more he thought of it the more puzzling it was. Certainly she had come from far; Stonor was well assured he would have heard of so striking a personage as this anywhere within his own bailiwick.

Another thought suddenly occurred to him. This of course would be the woman who had tried to decoy him out of his camp with her cries for help in English. At least she explained that bit of the all-enveloping mystery.

“Well, here’s a pretty how-de-do!” said Stonor with grim humour. “Who are you?”

She merely favoured him with a glance of inexpressible scorn.

“I know you talk English,” he said, “good English too. So there’s no use trying to bluff me that you don’t understand. What is your name, to begin with?”

Still no answer but the curling lip.

“What’s the idea of shooting at a policeman? Is it worth hanging for?”

She gave no sign.

He saw that it only gratified her to balk his curiosity, so he turned away with a shrug. “If you won’t talk, that’s your affair.”

He had thrown only light stuff on the fire, and he let it burn itself out, having no mind to make of himself a shining mark for a bullet from another quarter. He lit his pipe and sat debating what to do or rather struggling with his desire to set off instantly in search of Imbrie’s camp. Knowing it must be near, it was hard to be still. Yet better sense told him he would be at a fatal disadvantage in the dark, particularly as Imbrie must now be on the alert. There was no help for it. He must wait for daylight.

He knew that above all he required sleep to fit him for his work next day, and he determined to impose sleep on himself if will-power could do it. As he rose to return to his tent a sullen voice from the direction of the willow-bushes spoke up in English as good as his own:

“The mosquitoes are biting me.”

“Ha!” said Stonor, with a grim laugh. “You’ve found your tongue, eh? Mosquitoes! That’s not a patch on what you intended for me, my girl! But if you want to be friends, all right. First give an account of yourself.”

She relapsed into silence.

“I say, tell me who you are and where you came from.”

She said, with exactly the manner of a wilful child: “You can’t make me talk.”

“Oh, all right! But I can let the mosquitoes bite you.”

Nevertheless he untied her from the willows and let her crawl under his mosquito-bar. Here he tied ankles as well as wrists, beyond any possibility of escape. It was not pure philanthropy on his part, for he reflected that when she failed to return, Imbrie might come in search of her, and take a shot inside his tent just on a chance. For himself he took his blanket under the darkest shadow of the willows and covered himself entirely with it excepting a hole to breathe through.

He did succeed in sleeping, and when he awoke the sky was clear and the stars paling. Before crawling out of his hiding-place he took a careful survey from between the branches. Nothing stirred outside. Under his tent his prisoner was sleeping as calmly as a child. Apparently a frustrated murder more or less was nothing to disturb her peace of mind. Stonor thought grimly for perhaps the hundredth time in dealing with the red race: “What a rum lot they are!” He ate some bread that he had left, and began to pack up.

The woman awoke as he took down the tent over her head, and watched his preparations in a sullen silence.

“Haven’t you got a tongue this morning?” asked Stonor.

She merely glowered at him.

However, by and by, when she saw everything being packed in the canoe, she suddenly found her tongue. “Aren’t you going to feed me?” she demanded.

“No time now,” he answered teasingly.

Her face turned dark with rage. “You hangman!” she muttered savagely. “You’ve got a hangman’s face all right! Anybody would know what you are without your livery!”

Stonor laughed. “Dear! Dear! We are in a pleasant humour this morning!
You believe in the golden rule, don’t you? for others!”

When he was ready to start he regarded her grimly. He saw no recourse but to take her with him, thus quadrupling his difficulties. He did consider leaving her behind on the chance of returning later, but he could not tell what hazards the day might have for him. He might be prevented from returning, and murderess though she were, she was human, and he could not bring himself to leave her helpless in the bush. She stolidly watched the struggle going on in him.

He gave in to his humanitarian instincts with a sigh. As a final precaution he gagged her securely with a handkerchief. He wished to take no chances of her raising an alarm as they approached Imbrie’s camp. He then picked her up and laid her in the canoe. She rolled the light craft from side to side.

“If you overturn us you’ll drown like a stone,” said Stonor, grinning. “That would help solve my difficulties.”

After that she lay still, her eyes blazing.

Stonor proceeded. This part of the river was narrow and fairly deep, and the current ran steadily and slow. Through breaks in the ranks of the trees he caught sight from time to time of the bench on either hand, which now rose in high bold hills. From this he guessed that he had got back to the true prairie country again. As is always the case in that country, the slope to the north of the river was grassy, while the southerly slope was heavily wooded to the top.

He peered around each bend with a fast-beating heart, but Imbrie’s camp proved to be not so near as he had expected. He put a mile behind him, and another mile, and there was still no sign of it. Evidently the woman had not made her way through the bush, as he had supposed, but had been dropped off to wait for him. After giving him his quietus she had no doubt intended to take his canoe and join her party. Well, it was another lovely morning, and Stonor was thankful her plan had miscarried.

The river took a twist to the southward. The sun rose and shot his beams horizontally through the tree-trunks, lighting up the underbrush with a strange golden splendour. It was lovely and slightly unreal, like stage-lighting. The surface of the river itself seemed to be dusted with light. Far overhead against the blue, so tender and so far away at this latitude, eagles circled and joyously screamed, each one as if he had an intermittent alarm in his throat.

In the bow the woman lay glaring at him venomously. Stonor could not help but think: “What a gorgeous old world to be fouled with murder and hatred!”

At last, as he crept around an overhanging clump of willows, he saw what he was in search of, and his heart gave a great leap. Arresting his paddle, he clung to the branches and peered through, debating what to do. They were still far off and he had not been perceived. With straining eyes he watched the three tiny figures that meant so much to him. Unfortunately there was no chance of taking Imbrie by surprise, for he had had the wit to choose a camping-place that commanded a view down-stream for half a mile. Stonor considered landing, and attempting to take them from the rear, but even as he looked he saw Imbrie loading the dug-out. They would be gone long before he could make his way round through the bush. There was nothing to do but make a dash for it.

They saw him as soon as he rounded the bend. There was a strange dramatic quality in the little beings running this way and that on the beach. Stonor, straining every nerve to reach them, was nevertheless obliged to be the witness of a drama in which he was powerless to intervene. He saw Imbrie throw what remained of his baggage into the dug-out. He saw the two petticoated figures start running up the beach towards him, Stonor. Imbrie started after them. The larger of the two figures dropped back and grappled with the man, evidently to give the other a chance to escape. But Imbrie succeeded in flinging her off, and, after a short chase, seized the other woman. Stonor could make out the little green Norfolk suit now.

Mary snatched up a billet of wood, and as the man came staggering back with his burden, she attacked him. He backed towards the dug-out, holding Clare’s body in front of him as a shield. But under Mary’s attacks he was finally compelled to drop Clare. She must have fainted, for she lay without moving. Imbrie closed with Mary, and there was a brief violent struggle. He succeeded in flinging her off again. He reached the dug-out. Mary attacked him again. Snatching up his gun, he fired at her point-blank. She crumpled up on the stones.

Imbrie picked up Clare and flung her in the dug-out. He pushed off. All this had been enacted in not much more time than it takes to read of it. Stonor was now within a furlong, but still helpless, for he dared not fire at Imbrie for fear of hitting Clare. The dug-out escaped out of sight round a bend.