Kayerts heard and understood.  He stumbled out of the verandah, leaving the other man quite alone for the first time since they had been thrown there together.  He groped his way through the fog, calling in his ignorance upon the invisible heaven to undo its work.  Makola flitted by in the mist, shouting as he ran—­

“Steamer!  Steamer!  They can’t see.  They whistle for the station.  I go ring the bell.  Go down to the landing, sir.  I ring.”

He disappeared.  Kayerts stood still.  He looked upwards; the fog rolled low over his head.  He looked round like a man who has lost his way; and he saw a dark smudge, a cross-shaped stain, upon the shifting purity of the mist.  As he began to stumble towards it, the station bell rang in a tumultuous peal its answer to the impatient clamour of the steamer.

The Managing Director of the Great Civilizing Company (since we know that civilization follows trade) landed first, and incontinently lost sight of the steamer.  The fog down by the river was exceedingly dense; above, at the station, the bell rang unceasing and brazen.

The Director shouted loudly to the steamer: 

“There is nobody down to meet us; there may be something wrong, though they are ringing.  You had better come, too!”

And he began to toil up the steep bank.  The captain and the engine-driver of the boat followed behind.  As they scrambled up the fog thinned, and they could see their Director a good way ahead.  Suddenly they saw him start forward, calling to them over his shoulder:—­“Run!  Run to the house!  I’ve found one of them.  Run, look for the other!”

He had found one of them!  And even he, the man of varied and startling experience, was somewhat discomposed by the manner of this finding.  He stood and fumbled in his pockets (for a knife) while he faced Kayerts, who was hanging by a leather strap from the cross.  He had evidently climbed the grave, which was high and narrow, and after tying the end of the strap to the arm, had swung himself off.  His toes were only a couple of inches above the ground; his arms hung stiffly down; he seemed to be standing rigidly at attention, but with one purple cheek playfully posed on the shoulder.  And, irreverently, he was putting out a swollen tongue at his Managing Director.

THE RETURN

The inner circle train from the City rushed impetuously out of a black hole and pulled up with a discordant, grinding racket in the smirched twilight of a West-End station.  A line of doors flew open and a lot of men stepped out headlong.  They had high hats, healthy pale faces, dark overcoats and shiny boots; they held in their gloved hands thin umbrellas and hastily folded evening papers that resembled stiff, dirty rags of greenish, pinkish, or whitish colour.  Alvan Hervey stepped out with the rest, a smouldering cigar between his teeth.  A disregarded little woman in rusty black, with both arms full of parcels,