At noon a guard brought in his dinner.  He could not recall that he had ever seen this man before, a tall, lithe fellow built to run like a hound, and who wore a murderous-looking knife at his belt.  As the door opened, David caught a glimpse of two others.  They were business-like looking individuals, with muscles built for work or fight; one sitting cross-legged on the bateau deck with a rifle over his knees, and the other standing with a rifle in his hand.  The man who brought his dinner wasted no time or words.  He merely nodded, murmured a curt bonjour, and went out.  And Carrigan, as he began to eat, did not have to tell himself twice that Audemard had been particular in his selection of the bateau’s crew, and that the eyes of the men he had seen could be as keen as a hawk’s when leveled over the tip of a rifle barrel.  They meant business, and he felt no desire to smile in the face of them, as he had smiled at Concombre Bateese.

It was another man, and a stranger, who brought in his supper.  And for two hours after that, until the sun went down and gloom began to fall, the bateau sped down the river.  It had made forty miles that day, he figured.

It was still light when the bateau was run ashore and tied up, but tonight there were no singing voices or wild laughter of men whose hours of play-time and rest had come.  To Carrigan, looking through his window, there was an oppressive menace about it all.  The shadowy figures ashore were more like a death-watch than a guard, and to dispel the gloom of it he lighted two of the lamps in the cabin, whistled, drummed a simple chord he knew on the piano, and finally settled down to smoking his pipe.  He would have welcomed the company of Bateese, or Joe Clamart, or one of the guards, and as his loneliness grew upon him there was something of companionship even in the subdued voices he heard occasionally outside.  He tried to read, but the printed words jumbled themselves and meant nothing.

It was ten o’clock, and clouds had darkened the night, when through his open windows he heard a shout coming from the river.  Twice it came before it was answered from the bateau, and the second time Carrigan recognized it as the voice of Roger Audemard.  A brief interval passed between that and the scraping of a canoe alongside, and then there was a low conversation in which even Audemard’s great voice was subdued, and after that the grating of a key in the lock, and the opening of the door, and Black Roger came in, bearing an Indian reed basket under his arm.  Carrigan did not rise to meet him.  It was not like the coming of the old St. Pierre, and on Black Roger’s lips there was no twist of a smile, nor in his eyes the flash of good-natured greeting.  His face was darkly stern, as if he had traveled far and hard on an unpleasant mission, but in it there was no shadow of menace, as there had been in that of Concombre Bateese.  It was rather the face of a tired man, and yet David knew what he saw was not physical exhaustion.  Black Roger guessed something of his thought, and his mouth for an instant repressed a smile.