Splashing and stumbling, they went forward and when they struggled up the bank Kit wiped his wet face.  For a moment or two he had thought the men would drop their load and as it jolted, vague and black, on their shoulders, the creaking of the poles had jarred his nerves.  He was going to keep his promise, but he sympathized with the man who had had enough.

After they left the creek, the road got very bad and in places vanished in belts of swamp.  They sank in mud and stagnant water and no light pierced the daunting gloom, but it was not hard to keep the proper line, because one could not enter the jungle without a cutlass to clear a path.  At length, when the men were exhausted, the trees got thinner and the moonlight shining through touched the front of a ruined building.  The rest was indistinct, but the building was large and had evidently belonged to a sugar or coffee planter.  The sailors stopped and Kit studied a gap in the wall.

The gap did not look inviting and there were, no doubt, snakes and poisonous spiders inside, but he could go no farther and the broken walls offered some protection.  Perhaps Kit was moved by an atavistic fear of the dark forest, and he owned that he was influenced by the civilized man’s longing for the shelter of a house.  They went in, and after putting down the coffin in a room where vines crawled about the ruined wall, the sailors entered the next.  One frankly stated that they wanted to get away from the coffin; Kit could stop and watch it if he liked, but it bothered them to have the thing about.

Kit let them go, and sitting down in a corner among the rubbish lighted a cigar.  A moonbeam rested on the opposite wall and the room was not dark.  Some light came in through holes, although there was impenetrable gloom beyond the door by which the men had gone.  He could see the wet leaves of the vines, and the black coffin, covered by the flag.  But he was not afraid of it; the man who lay there had been his friend and claimed the fulfilment of his promise.

At the same time, it was soothing to hear the sailors’ voices, until they got faint and stopped.  Afterwards the silence was burdensome, although a small creature began to rustle in the wall.  Kit did not know if it was a snake or a spider, and was too tired to feel disturbed.  By and by his cigar fell from his mouth.  He picked it up, but it fell again and his head drooped.

The moonbeam had moved some distance when he opened his eyes and straightened his body with a jerk.  The room was nearly dark, and when he thought about it afterwards, he imagined he was only half awake, for his heart beat and he was conscious of an enervating fear.  A dark object, indistinct but like a man, stood beside the coffin.