‘Gorley!’ he said.

There was a rustling of boughs against the opposite wall, and a voice answered from close to the ground.

‘Damn you, what do you want?’

‘Have you anything you wish to say?’

‘That depends,’ replied Gorley after a short pause, and his voice changed to an accent of cunning.

‘There’s no bargain to be made.’

The words were spoken with a sharp precision, and again there was a rustling of leaves as though Gorley had fallen back upon his bed of branches.

‘But you can undo some of the harm,’ continued Drake, and at that Gorley laughed.  Drake stopped on the instant, and for a while there was silence between the pair.  A gray beam of light shot through a chink between the logs, and then another and another until the darkness of the hut changed to a vaporous twilight.  Then of a sudden the notes of a bugle sounded the reveille.  Gorley raised himself upon his elbows and thrust forward his head.  Outside he heard the rattle of arms, the chatter of voices, all the hum of a camp astir.

‘Drake,’ he whispered across to the figure standing against the door, ’there’s enough gold dust to make two men rich, but you shall have it all if you let me go.  You can—­easily enough.  It wouldn’t be difficult for a man to slip away into the forest on the march back if you gave the nod to the sentries guarding him.  All I ask for is a rifle and a belt of cartridges.  I’d shift for myself then.’

He ended abruptly and crouched, listening to the orders shouted to the troops outside.  The men were being ranged in their companies.  Then the companies in succession were marched, halted, wheeled, and halted again.  Gorley traced a plan of their evolutions with his fingers upon the floor of the hut.  The companies were formed into a square.

‘Drake,’ he began again, and he crawled a little way across the hut; ’Drake, do you hear what I’m saying?  There’s a fortune for you, mind you, all of it; and I am the only one who can tell you where it is.  I didn’t trust those black fellows—­no, no,’ and he wagged his head with an attempt at an insinuating laugh.  ’I had it all gathered together, and I buried it myself at night.  You gave me a chance before with nothing to gain.  Give me another; you have everything to gain this time.  Drake, why don’t you speak?’

‘Because there’s no bargain to be made between you and me,’ replied Drake.  ’If you tell me where the gold dust’s hid, it will be given back to the people it belonged to, or rather to those of them you left alive.  You can do some good that way by telling me, but you won’t save your life.’

Steps were heard to approach the hut; there was a rap on the door.

‘Well?’ asked Drake.

Gorley raised himself from the floor.

‘I am not making you rich and letting you kill me too,’ he said; and then, ‘Who cares?  I’m ready.’

Drake opened the door and stepped out.  Gorley swaggered after him.  He stood for a moment on the threshold.  Here and there a wisp of fog ringed a tree-trunk or smoked upon the ground.  But for the rest, the clearing, littered with the charred debris of a native village, lay bare and desolate in a cold morning light.