The Mangrove Man

by Ralph Stock

THE MANGROVE MAN

By RALPH STOCK

 

MANGROVES are—well, mangroves. They are like mosquitoes and sundry other adjuncts to life in the tropics—no sound excuse has yet been found for their existence. Perhaps some day a really clever scientist will discover that they contain the cure for a cold in the head, or something. In the meantime they remain what they are, a gnarled and twisted horror or roots, sprouting from black slime, and harbouring every loathsome thing that crawls, swims, or flies.

That is why Strode came to possess half an island of them. No one else would have been seen dead with the things. He was considered mad on their account, but he as not. He was only Strode—Strode who had landed in the Islands with nothing more than the physique and mind of a mule.

He soon found that working for others on a copra place led to nothing but the nearest bar, and that his qualities were wasted in a country where the white man is forbidden by an unwritten but none the less stringent law so much as to lift a finger in manual toil. He came very near working his passage to Australia, where he would most certainly have found a vent for his superfluous energies amongst the tall timber of the backblocks, but at that particular juncture chanced to meet Bowman.

The name should be enough. If it is not, then you have never been near the Islands. It stands for most of the money and property in the Tau Group, for a chain of stores covering several hundred miles of beach and jungle, and for a fat little man with the face of a cherub and the soul of a fox.

He was taking his customary cup of afternoon tea in the lounge of "The Polynesian," when Strode, who was waiting for the Sydney boat, drifted in.

"Just arrived?" suggested Bowman. He believed in getting to know everyone. You can never tell how much use a fellow-creature may be.

"No," said Strode in his slow, deep bass. "Just leaving—if I get the chance."

"Like that, is it?" Bowman leant back in "The Polynesian's" only comfortable chair, stirred his tea, and prepared to listen to the average hard luck yarn.

But it was not forthcoming. Strode picked up a week-old paper and began to read, which nettled Bowman. He was not used to being regarded as of secondary importance to anything.

"Sorry we don't suit," he remarked, with the smile that always served to cloak his sarcasms.

Strode looked up with a slightly puzzled expression. "Oh, it's not that," he said. "The Islands suit me all right, but I don't seem to suit them."

"Drink?" queried Bowman, his smile broadening to, cover the blatancy of the question.

Strode shook his head. "No," he said, "that doesn't worry me."

"Mat fever?" (Indolence.)

"No, I don't think I've ever been accused of that."

"Then what the mischief's the matter with the Islands?"

"They don't let a man work," said Strode.

Bowman was surprised into letting his tea get cold.

"Well," he said, after a reflective pause, "I've heard a few complaints in my time, but that's a new one. They've let me work all right."

"Yes," said Strode, "with your head." He leant upon the bar, his mahogany-coloured face clouded after the fashion of a man who finds some difficulty in expressing himself. "But that's not in my line, Mr. Bowman."

"You know who I am, then?"

"Oh, yes, I know who you are. I worked on your Malita estate."

"And they didn't let you work hard enough?"

"No."

Bowman blew out his pink cheeks and allowed them to slowly collapse.

"Well, that ought easily to be remedied," he said.

"It ought," Strode agreed, "but it isn't. I started humping copra sacks for exercise, but they stopped me. Said it wasn't done. Then, when I saw it taking ten coolies half the day to pole a punt down the coast, I sent them copra getting and did it myself. But your manager didn't like that either."

"He wouldn't," said Bowman. "Neither would I. You haven't got this thing right. How are we to keep up the prestige of the white man if he takes to doing things like that?"

"That's just what they told me," muttered Strode a trifle wearily, "so I suppose they're right, though I didn't notice any loss of prestige. For that matter, the coolies seemed to work better for me than anyone else."

There was no hint of bravado in the utterance. It was a plain statement of fact, and Bowman recognised it as such. His nimble mind was already at work on Strode, dissecting him, reassembling him, seeing just how such a quaint individual could be made to fit into the scheme of things Bowmanian.

"Seems to me you're wanted here," he observed at last.

"Yes, that's why I'm leaving," said Strode.

"And yet"—Bowman appeared to be thinking deeply, but he was not. He had made up his mind about Strode: the fellow needed a lesson, then he might be of use—"and yet, if you want to do the work of ten coolies, I don't see why you shouldn't—on someone else's place."

Strode shook his head. "They don't pay my wages here," he said.

"Oh!" Bowman leant back and appeared to be pondering this new problem. "And what may they be?"

Without the flicker of an eyelash Strode mentioned a sum about three times in excess of what Bowman paid his managers.

"No," mused the little man, "I shouldn't think they would. What can you do, by the way?"

"Pretty near anything with my hands," said Strode.

"You price yourself a bit high, don't you?"

"I don't think so. I've got something to sell, just the same as you or any man, and that's my price."

"Well, I'm not buying," snapped Bowman.

"I didn't ask you to," said Strode.

A minah bird strutted in from the verandah and pecked about the floor for stray crumbs. Bowman watched it for a moment, then burst into one of his well-known laughs. The deals that laugh had sealed should be incorporated in any history of the Islands.

"Come to think of it, you didn't," he admitted. "I'm so used to wasters crawling to me for jobs——"

"Oh, that's all right," said Strode, and turned towards the door.

Bowman watched him go—as far as the verandah—then called him back,

"You're not above a bit of advice?" he suggested.

"No."

"Well, if you can earn that with your hands, don't work for other people."

"I wouldn't if I could help it, but how's a man to get hold of a place of his own in this country?"

"Earn it," said Bowman.

"What—by saving enough out of your wages to buy?"

"No. Get paid in land."

Strode looked down at his enormous feet, then into the cherubic face before him.

"And where do I meet anyone who'll do that?" he asked.

"Here," said Bowman, levering himself out of the chair and shaking his ducks into shape. "I'm going on an inspection trip to Lanua to-morrow. Meet me at the landing six o'clock sharp, if you feel like going any further in the matter."

"All right," said Strode, "I will."

He kept the appointment, and to the tick of the stated hour Bowman's launch, a sleek thing of polished brass and glittering enamel, shot out from the landing. It was said that he was the only man in the Islands who could keep a Kanaka to time.

On arrival at Lanua, Bowman, who believed in surprise visits, proceeded to make his manager's life rather less attractive than it was under ordinary circumstances, and those were nothing to write home about. But towards evening he seemed to remember Strode's existence, and took him along the beach road to where the palm groves ended and the land fell away into a swamp, mercifully hidden under its dark green roof of mangroves.

"There's your land," he said vigorously flicking his fly whisk in an effort to dispel the clouds of mosquitoes that hovered about their heads. "If you can make anything of that, you can have it."

Anyone else would have looked on the offer as a joke, or told Bowman what he thought of him. But Strode did neither.

He stood in silence for some time, looking out over that noisome stretch of country as though he were giving it serious consideration. And he was.

"How much of it?" he asked.

"As much as you can clear and plant to anything that'll grow," said Bowman. "I don't mind telling you it's no good to me. Whew! These things are eating me alive!"

"If I give you an answer by to-morrow evening, will that be time enough?" Strode asked.

"Plenty," said Bowman. "Let's get out of here."

The next day Strode failed to put in an appearance, but about ten o'clock that night, while Bowman and his manager were smoking on the verandah, a weird object emerged from the groves into the full moonlight of the compound and appeared to indulge in some new form of callisthenics. It was Strode, scraping the mud from himself—or, rather, trying to, for when he mounted the verandah steps there was still little of him visible.

A house-boy brought him tinned stuff, which he consumed in large quantities, squatting on the steps.

"Well," said Bowman, drawing amusedly at his cigar, "do you like our land any better than our wages?"

Strode did not answer the question. Instead, he swallowed a prodigious mouthful, washed it down with tea, and said: "I close with your offer, Mr. Bowman, and thank you."

The idea of any man thanking him for a mangrove flat tickled Bowman, but he did not laugh.

"What are you giving us?" his manager asked him the next morning, when it became evident that Strode intended to stay on Lanua.

"I'm giving you a young man who says we don't let him work hard enough," said Bowman, settling back amongst the launch cushions.

"But what am I to do with him?" wailed the manager.

"Nothing," said Bowman. "Leave him alone until he's broken his heart, then report to me."

The launch sheered away from the landing, and the manager wended a mystified way to the store.

There he found Strode discussing hardware and sundries with the Kanaka assistant.

"I'll choose what I want, and you can make a note of it," he said, and proceeded to build on the counter a neat pyramid of three sheets of corrugated iron, his personal belongings in a grain sack, a supply of dynamite sticks, axe heads and handles, a couple of shovels, a pickaxe, a crowbar, and a promiscuous assortment of groceries.

"I had no instructions to let you have anything out of the store," said the manager. He was a lean, liverish sort of person with an unholy dread of Bowman.

Strode looked at him. "This stuff's for sale, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes, but only for cash—to strangers."

"Well, then——" said Strode, and produced some money.

He did not say that the payment of that bill left him with precisely nothing. He merely hoisted the entire purchase on to his head, with a copra sack as a buffer, and stalked down the beach road like a perambulating cistern.

It took him the greater part of the day to reach his objective, but reach it he did, sweating and weary as he had never yet been in the Islands. That night the corrugated iron became a roof of sorts—the only sort to resist a tropical downpour—and Strode squatted before his own home door, munching bully beef and wild plantain by the light of the moon.

To follow his movements from then onward would mean watching him rise with the dawn, exerting the last ounce of his immense strength and endurance throughout a wilting and mosquito-infested day, and retiring to rest as darkness fell after a brief interview with a photograph of a fluffy girl who lived in a town four thousand miles distant, A monotonous business. It were better, perhaps, to pry into his correspondence, which consisted of an apparently endless letter, written in instalments, with a stub of indelible pencil on soiled scraps of paper.

"Dearest," he wrote,

"I'm on the track at last. A man here has given me a mangrove swamp, if I can do anything with it, and I'm going to. You know I learnt something about irrigation in the West. Well, put it all backwards, and you've got what I'm trying to do here. Instead of bringing water on to land, I have got to get rid of it, and when that's done, some of the best land on this island will be ours! Anyway, I've got work in front of me that I can do, and do all the quicker because I know it's for you, and.…" (The asterisks indicate passages that have no bearing on the matter in hand.) "The swamp is made by a river that comes down from the hills and spreads out all over the flat. Well, I'm going to make that river go somewhere else. It's so simple after the the job in Rip's Gap that I laughed when I saw it. At one place on the hillside it flows within a hundred yards of a cliff falling sheer to the sea. Dig a ditch through that bit of cliff, and the river becomes a waterfall. Do you get the idea? It'll take time, because I have no money to hire help; but I'm strong and well, and I've got you.… I can see just where our home is going to be. There's a bit of a hill down on the flat, with a drahla tree on it in full bloom, a blaze of scarlet. And I can just see you.…"

He posted the letter at Bowman's store, and thereafter—for a solid six months, if you can imagine it—that tropic hillside rang to the labours of man, a hole in the ground became imperceptibly larger, and somewhere at the bottom of it Strode sweated and sang.

He was thinner—that was the only noticeable difference about him at the end of that time—and his eyes were a trifle too bright to be natural, but then he had worked clean through two attacks of fever, and another was close upon him. Also he had taken to audible communion with the photograph of the fluffy girl, which was a bad sign.

"If only I didn't have to eat and sleep," he wrote, "what a saving of time! As it is, I have to hunt my grub now; but there's plenty of it—fish, bush-pig, pigeon and plantains, and—I'm only fifteen yards from the edge! What do you think of that? Peg's Fall I shall call it. If only you could be here to see.…"

But "Peg" was not, so that when the great moment came, it was only her photograph, upheld in Strode's hand, that looked with stony eyes on a gaunt, work-soiled man watching with fevered intensity a trickle of water that crept down the cutting towards the cliff's edge. Perhaps it heard him laugh aloud as the trickle became a deluge, leaping into space with a flurry of spindrift, and sending the gannets shrieking from their drowned-out nests.

"It's done," he wrote that night. "I can hear Peg's Fall at this blessed moment, and next to your voice it's the finest music I ever listened to.… I believe the darned river wanted to go that way all the time. Most of them seem in a mighty hurry to reach the sea, and I've shown this one a short cut, that's all. It's me for a bit of a rest now, before I tackle the clearing.…"

The next day he walked into Bowman's store, posted the letter, and quietly crumpled on to the floor.

He came to under the manager's mosquito bar, and swung on to the edge of the bed with a suddenness that nearly jerked it from its rusty legs.

"What's happened?" he demanded.

The manager, who was indulging in a sundowner on the verandah, lounged into the doorway.

"You fainted," he said.

"Me? Faint?" Strode tried to laugh, but the pain in his head spoilt the effect.

"Yes, you," said the manager. "You don't claim to be different from anyone else, do you?"

"No, but——"

"Well, then——" said the manager.

"But why did I faint?"

"Ever heard of fever?"

"Yes."

"Well, you've got it."

"Oh," said Strode, and lay back with chattering teeth.

"This is m-m-mighty g-good of you," he jerked out.

The manager did not answer. It was hardly necessary to point out that in the Islands the devil himself would do no less for a man in Strode's position. He threw a couple more blankets on the quaking body, administered quinine, and returned to his sundowner.

Strode's "rest" lasted three days, and consisted for the most part of lying on the flat of his back, alternately making a noise like castanets and blithering about someone named "Peg's Fall." But the manager was used to it. He was used to most things. Then the patient arose, and made himself the kind of nuisance that only seems possible to a strong man who doesn't know when he's weak.

Perhaps it was a parcel he had just received that precipitated matters. It was registered, and contained a ten-paged letter that appeared to give entire satisfaction, a sum of money about sufficient to buy a bag of lozenges, with the strict injunction that it was to be used for "hiring help," and a hand-knitted woollen muffler.

It is to be feared that Strode lacked a sense of humour. In any case, his smile was not one of amusement, even at the muffler. He anathematised himself as a malingerer for not being at work for the sender of such a parcel, and took a grateful leave of the manager.

"Don't talk about it," grunted that worthy. "I may breeze in on you that way some time. I don't know who you are, or what you're doing, but I can tell you this: you're doing it too hard."

Strode grinned and shook his head.

"All right," said the manager, "you know best. S'long."

From behind the store counter he watched his late patient plunge into the glare of the compound and diminish, with a slightly wavering gait, down the beach road.

"Some blamed woman!" he muttered, and slouched back to the. verandah and a sundowner.

As for Strode, the work that had gone before was child's play compared with what followed. The mangroves received him with open arms, and writhed with mirth at his puny efforts to destroy them. They found it amusing, no doubt, to watch him plastering himself with slime in an effort to admit amongst them the purging sunlight that they loathed. Or so it seemed to Strode. And that was how he came in time to regard them as something alive, as implacable enemies against whom he had waged war. At night, in the lean-to now situated in their midst, he could hear them laughing contemptuously or murmuring amongst themselves.

For a mangrove swamp is articulate. It crackles with the scuttlings of a myriad crabs. Its mud will subside with a long-drawn sigh, or suck and slobber like a gross eater. And of a night Strode would listen and laugh, for he knew that his enemy was in travail. It was crying out for water that would never again nourish its pestilential carcase. What was more, he had cleared nearly an acre. Often he would stand and watch the yellow sunlight streaming down on solidifying land that for unknown centuries had lain in rotting gloom, and at such times felt like a conqueror releasing prisoners from bondage.

"An acre of Lanua is ours," he wrote amongst other puerilities. "It's nothing much to look at just now, because the mangroves I've felled are lying all over it, but the sun and Peg's Fall have turned the trick between them. I'll be burning off in a month or less, then I'll plant banana suckers wherever possible to carry on with, and leave the stumping till later. I don't mind how long that takes, because you'll be here. Oh, yes, you will! The bank will make an advance all right when they see what I've got. Such land! I don't know how long that river had been running down here—a few hundred years, I expect—but it carried all the best soil of the valley with it, and I should say our land is going to be black loam about half a mile deep.…"

It would be interesting to know just how these illuminating epistles were received in the twelve-by-fourteen room of the suburban villa where they came to rest, but that is beside the point. What approaches it more closely is to note the effect of Strode's handiwork on the South Pacific Sugar Refining Company's surveyor when he breasted the hills that divide Lanua in two and gazed on the flat below.

He had been with the Company something like fifteen years searching for possible expansions, and thought he knew the Group as well as any man, but somehow he didn't seem to recognise that flat. Wasn't there a river flowing on to it at one time? And what in thunder was a bald patch doing in the middle of the mangroves?

He was very thorough. The report and sketch plans he handed in to headquarters caused a mild sensation, and later a dignified gentleman to call at Bowman's office.

"I've come about some land of yours, Mr. Bowman."

The little man was entirely mystified, but contrived not to show it.

"Ah, yes, land," he repeated non-committally.

"No purpose can be served by beating about the bush," the other continued, laying an immaculate solar topee on the desk. "I refer to the flat adjoining your Lanua property to the westward."

Bowman was still at a loss, but he smiled genially while racking his brains to imagine why the most powerful sugar concern south of the Line should interest itself in a mangrove swamp. It was a mangrove swamp, wasn't it? Why, yes, it was there that the mosquitoes had been so infernal during—during an interview with some maniac who claimed that he was not allowed to work hard enough.… It all came back. Fancy forgetting that! But it happened a year—no, nearer two years ago, and he had heard nothing in the interval, which meant—which surely meant——

"We see you intend to do something with the land yourself"—the visitor's measured utterance penetrated his reflections—"and I must congratulate you on a really brilliant idea in the matter of the river."

Bowman had the presence of mind to incline his head and summon a deprecating smile.

"But as the soil is obviously unsuitable for copra, and it would be a sin to waste such land on any more than the ten acres you have already cleared and planted to bananas, we concluded you were improving the property with a view to sale. In which case"—the dignified gentleman paused and wiped his glasses—"you may regard us as interested, Mr. Bowman."

The voice ceased, and Bowman removed his fixed gaze from a discoloured patch on the opposite wall.

"If I let you have my terms in three days' time, will that be satisfactory?" he suggested.

"Perfectly," agreed the other, unbending sufficiently to shake hands in farewell with a man he would not have spoken to under ordinary circumstances. "First offer is all we want, Mr. Bowman. Good day."

When he had gone, Bowman stood stock still in the middle of the room for a full half-minute. First offer—from the South Pacific Sugar Refining Company Incorporated—for a mangrove swamp! Then he came to life.

The launch shot down to Lanua under a star-pricked sky. The manager was very naturally and very wearily in bed, but it made no difference to Bowman. Yanking the mosquito bar aside, he shook his victim unmercifully.

"Why didn't you report?" he barked.

"Report?" echoed the dazed manager, more than half convinced that he had died during the night, and this was hell. "Report what?"

"Report what?" mimicked Bowman venomously. "Where's that fellow who came here about eighteen months ago because he couldn't get enough work anywhere else?"

"Oh, you mean Strode."

"Yes, that's who I mean. Where is he? What's he been doing? Why haven't you sent in a report?"

The manager climbed out on the opposite side of the bed and lit the lamp with a trembling hand. Then he faced Bowman and tried to pull himself together. It was a pathetic sight.

"My instructions were to leave him alone until he'd broken his heart," he answered.

"That's so."

"Well, he hasn't."

Bowman turned from him with a gesture of impatient disgust.

"You're fired," he said.

"Thank Heaven!" said the manager, and climbed into bed again.

It was over. His awe of Bowman had fallen from him like a leaden weight.

Bowman occupied the time until dawn pacing the verandah and muttering to himself. It may seem peculiar that a man of his wealth and standing should make such an exhibition of himself over a mere proposal to buy land, but it must be borne in mind that the proposal was from the South Pacific Sugar Refining Company, which might mean anything, and that he was as avaricious as only a wealthy man can be. Moreover, his behaviour was not an "exhibition" in the accepted meaning of the term, but just Bowman, naked and unashamed.

At daylight he ordered a couple of ponies to be saddled, and set out with his long-suffering and dismissed manager, who accompanied him out of curiosity more than anything else.

A few hours' ride showed him as much and more than he needed to see, and in the afternoon he approached the alleged "bald spot" in the mangroves.

It could hardly be called "bald" at the moment. Six-months-old banana plants make a brave show, and on a slight eminence in the midst of them there was a drahla tree in full bloom, with a very fair imitation of a native house nestling in its shade.

Bowman dismounted at the edge of the clearing for fear of the ground, which was still treacherous in places, and approached the "house" with mixed feelings. Not that he anticipated any difficulty in the long run, but the opening phases of the interview might be delicate. He summoned his smile and heartiest handshake for the man whose very existence he had forgotten, and who met him in the doorway as though they had parted but yesterday.

"Thought I'd look you up," beamed Bowman.

"Glad to see you," said Strode.

"After a year, or is it two?"

"Nearer two, I fancy."

Bowman accepted an invitation to be seated on one of his own copra sacks stretched across a framework of mangrove sticks, and proffered cigars.

"Thanks, I don't smoke," said Strode.

"Well, did you find enough work?" Bowman shot at him genially over a lighted match.

Strode grinned reminiscently. "Plenty," he said. "And now I've only just begun."

"Ah!" Bowman appeared to digest the remark. "I wonder when you'll have had enough?"

"When this flat's cleared."

"I see, when the flat's cleared. And you find the wages good enough, eh?"

Strode sat on the edge of his home-made bed, and looked through the open doorway at the quivering green sea of banana leaves.

"Yes," he said, "the wages suit me all right."

"Because, if they don't, I thought of raising them," said Bowman.

Strode turned slowly and looked at him. "I don't see how you could do that," he said. "I'm much obliged for the chance you gave me. As a matter of fact, I was coming to see you soon. I shall want the deeds, or a written agreement of some sort before touching the bank for working capital."

"That's soon settled," chirped Bowman, and produced a cheque book. "Let's see." He continued to talk for much the same reason that a conjurer employs patter. "I forget just what the arrangement was. Pretty stiff, I know that, but it's worth it. You've done well here. Name the wages, and they're yours—with a bonus. I——"

He said a great deal more. He found it unwontedly difficult to stop with those wide, child-like eyes fastened upon him. Strode waited until the end, until, that was. Bowman petered out like a punctured balloon, then said: "My wages were the land, Mr. Bowman."

"Land?"

"Yes. If you remember, I was to have all that I cleared of mangroves and planted to any crop that would grow. Those were the terms of our agreement."

Bowman stared at the ridge pole overhead, his usually seamless brow creased with wrinkles in an apparently herculean effort of memory.

"I don't seem to recollect that," he confessed at last.

"I do," said Strode.

"You mentioned an agreement," suggested Bowman, with the air of one solving a knotty problem. "Where is it?"

"It was verbal."

"Ah, yes, verbal," Bowman nodded his head sagely.

Even then, if you can believe it, Strode failed to recognise that this man was play-acting. It must be remembered that he had lived a great deal alone, and that he came from a country where a man's word is accepted as his bond. Two years was a long time. Bowman would remember presently. He must be made to remember. With the same painstaking attention to detail that characterised his every effort, Strode launched info an account of events leading up to the final agreement on the verandah of the manager's bungalow.

It was amusing, but Bowman did not smile. With his small eyes half closed, he appeared to be still engaged in a struggle of recollection, punctuated at intervals with a gentle shake of the head.

Perhaps he overdid it. Perhaps by some instinct vouchsafed to fools in dealing with knaves, Strode was visited by a sudden and complete understanding of the situation. In any case, a glint came into his eyes as he looked on Bowman and said quietly: "You liar!"

Bowman did not answer at the moment, but slowly changed colour, then picked up his cheque book and returned it to his pocket.

"In that case——" he began, and made to rise.

"Sit down," said Strode, and for some reason Bowman obeyed.

"I think," he said, after a ghastly pause, "this job must have sent you off your head."

"P'r'aps it has," said Strode.

"So that you imagine things," ventured Bowman. He was aware that his legs trembled, and crossed them to stop it. "Here am I offering more than we agreed on in the way of payment for a couple of years' work, and——"

"My payment was the land," said Strode.

It was like charging a brick wall, yet Bowman continued the process. What else was there to be done? For the first time in his life he found his cunning, whether employed in persuasion or threat, of no more avail than thin air.

How long he sat on that copra sack, with Strode answering in monosyllables or not answering at all. Bowman had no notion, but the brief dusk was settling down on Lanua when he decided on the next course.

"How long do you figure on keeping me here?" he asked suddenly.

"Until you remember," said Strode. And the worst of it was, this mule-like individual meant it.

"It'll be a mighty long time before I remember what never happened," said Bowman. "No, I don't fancy waiting that long. Thompson!" He yelled his manager's name at the top of his voice.

It was the most absurd sound, coming out of the silence—something like the bleat of a distressed goat, and it was repeated with variations such as "Help!" But it had the desired effect. Thompson awoke from the semi-stupor in which he contrived to keep himself, and almost hurried in the direction of the noise.

Strode made no objection to his entry, but when it was effected, lit the hurricane lamp, took his rifle from the wall, and moved over to the doorway.

"This is a hold-up," spluttered Bowman. "The fellow's crazy."

Thompson looked from one to the other with an expression of mild inquiry.

"Hold-up? Who's doing the holding?"

"I am," said Strode.

"Can't you see?" wailed Bowman. "He's got a rifle; we haven't. He's keeping me here."

"What for?"

Bowman was very nearly speechless, but not quite.

"That's my business," he said. "Yours is to get me out of here."

Thompson took a seat. "I don't see that," he said. "I was fired this morning."

"You made a mistake," prompted Bowman.

"No." Thompson shook his weary head. "If I wasn't fired, I quit. Besides, I don't see how either of us is going to get out of here without being shot. I don't want to be shot."

"He wouldn't dare."

"Safety first," murmured Thompson; "and if it's so, why don't you get yourself out?"

It is a difficult matter to discuss means of escape in the presence of one's gaoler. Bowman found it so.

"Then you're going to stay as long as he chooses," he railed.

"I've seen many worse cribs," said Thompson, looking appreciatively about him.

"You're in league with him," stormed Bowman. "Blackmail, that's what it is. But I'll see about it——" And there he stopped. He was sorry he had said as much, for it had suddenly occurred to him what to do, what he should have done long since. There is only one way of handling a mule.

Darkness had closed down. Out of the night beyond the clearing came the weird noises of the swamp, while in the yellow lamp-light loomed the figure of its guardian, silent, motionless. To Bowman there was something uncanny in the situation. It must be brought to an end.

"It seems to me," he said, with an air of resignation, "I shall have to give you what you want, Mr. Strode."

"It rather looks like it," agreed the basilisk in the doorway. It was almost a a relief to hear it speak.

"What will satisfy you?"

"A written agreement in the terms of our verbal one, and witnessed by Mr. Thompson," said Strode. "You'll find stamps and paper on the table."

Bowman wrote in silence for a space. Thompson added a laboured signature, and Strode read it through with meticulous precision.

"Is this Mr. Bowman's usual signature?" he added.

Thompson nodded.

"Signed, sealed, and delivered," murmured Bowman, with his cherubic smile. "You're sure there's nothing else I can do?"

"Quite," said Strode.

But there he was wrong. There was just one thing to be done to make that agreement binding, and by some extraordinary twist of Fate Bowman did it.

He carried his smile into the inky darkness outside, for the document he had left behind him was not worth much more than the paper it was written on. Not so long as Bowman remained to contest it. "Agreements signed under compulsion" was the phrase that echoed, in his mind, and he could soon prove that. There was Thompson as witness.… There were ways.… Already he was pondering on those ways, pondering so deeply that he missed his own.

That is the only reasonable explanation of the trend of his footprints as followed by Strode and Thompson the next day. For a considerable distance they followed the narrow track leading from the clearing to the hillside where his horse was tethered. Then, just where the encroaching branches chanced to meet across the path, they bore to the left, turned and twisted through an illimitable maze of roots, grew fainter as the ground softened, and finally faded from sight.

Which bears out the original contention that mangroves are—well, mangroves.