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“It was Hamid who unpinned me and led me away. He had made shift to climb down, and while binding up my wounded hand pointed towards the beach. It was empty. The crowd of Berbalangs had disappeared.

“He found the track which Aoodya had missed, and as he led me up and out of the crater I heard him talking–talking. I suppose he was trying to comfort me–he was a good fellow; but at the top I turned on him, and ‘Master,’ I said, ‘you have tried to do me much kindness, but to-day I have bought my quittance.’ With that I left him standing and walked straight over the brow of the hill. I never looked behind me until I reached the Spaniards’ compound, and called out at the gate to be let pass.

“Captain Marquinez was lying in a hammock in the cool of his verandah when the gate-keeper took me to him. He was, I think, the weariest man I ever happened on. ‘So you want to leave the island?’ said he when my tale was out. ‘Yes, yes, I believe you; I’ve learnt to believe anything of those devils up yonder. But you must wait a fortnight, till the relief-boat arrives from Jola’–“

Here the story-teller broke off as a rider upon a grey horse came at a foot-pace round the slope of Burrator below us and passed on without seeing. It was the Rajah, returning solitary from the hunt, and his eyes were still fastened ahead of him.

“Ah, great man! England is a weary hole for the likes of you and me. It’s here they talk of the East, but we have loved it and hated it and known it, and remember. Our eyes have seen–our eyes have seen.”

He stood up, pulled himself together with a kind of shiver, and suddenly shambled away across the slope, having said no good-bye, but leaving me there at gaze.