She was right, somehow; there was no power to confute her.  He must come with her, or run back, useless, into the ring of swords and flames.  She and life were in the boat; ashore, a friend cut off beyond reach, an impossible duty, and death.  His eyes, dull and fixed in the smoky lantern-light, rested for an age on the knotted sarong.  It meant nothing; then in a flash, as though for him all light of the eyes had concentrated in a single vision, it meant everything.  The colored cloth—­rudely painted in the hut of some forgotten mountaineer—­held all her treasure and her heart, the things of this world.  She must go with those.  It was fitting.  She was beautiful—­in all her fear and disorder, still more beautiful.  She went with life, departing into a dream.  This glossy gunwale, polished by bare feet, was after all the sole reality, a shining line between life and death.

“Then I must die,” he groaned, and wrenched his hands away from that perilous boundary.

He vaguely heard her cry out, vaguely saw Chantel rise above the lantern and slash down at him with the lowdah’s pole.  The bamboo struck him, heavy but glancing, on the head.  He staggered, lost his footing, and fell into the mud, where, as though his choice had already overtaken him, he lay without thought or emotion, watching the dim light float off into the darkness.

By and by it was gone.  From somewhere in another direction came a sharp, continual, crackling fusillade, like the snapping of dry bamboo-joints in a fire.  The unstirring night grew heavier with the smell of burnt gunpowder.  But Rudolph, sitting in the mud, felt only that his eyes were dry and leaden in their sockets, that there was a drumming in his ears, and that if heat and weariness thus made an end of him, he need no longer watch the oppressive multitude of stars, or hear the monotony of flowing water.

Something stirred in the dry grass above him.  Without turning, he heard a man scramble down the bank; without looking up, he felt some one pause and stoop close.  When at last, in profound apathy, he raised his eyes, he saw against the starlight the hat, head, and shoulders of a coolie.

Quite natural, he thought, that the fellow should be muttering in German.  It was only the halting, rusty fashion of the speech that finally fretted him into listening.  The words did not concern him.

“Are you dead, then?” grumbled the coolie.  “Did she kill you?”

Rudolph dismissed him with a vague but angry motion.

Some time afterward the same voice came louder.  The coolie was still there.

“You cannot sit here all night,” he said.  “By daylight they will catch you.  Come.  Perhaps I can take you to your friends.  Come.”

Rudolph felt sharp knuckles working at his lips, and before he could rebel, found his mouth full of sweet fiery liquid.  He choked, swallowed, and presently heard the empty bottle splash in the river.