light the second of the very bad cigarettes that he had cadged.

"What are you doing?" Colonel Glinka said softly.

"Nothing, Effendi."

"Get up! Get up and get moving, my boy, or make your peace with Allah! Did you suppose for one moment that I had forgotten what we were talking about?"

It was quite dark by the time they had reached the summit of the ridge, but Colonel Glinka still marched along behind Abdul, high good humor restored, prodding him from time to time with the Malacca cane and lecturing him upon social equalities and other Party doctrine.

"Are we nearly there?" he would interrupt himself to ask from time to time.

"I do not know."

"Call out, then."

"I am afraid."

A savage poke with the cane, a war whoop from Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar. No answer.

"We'll get him," Colonel Glinka would say. "Oh, my, yes."

But an hour had passed and still they had encountered no living thing upon the path.

At last Abdul stopped abruptly. They were in a little, narrow ravine, high above the sea, with looming red cliffs all about them, and the booming of the surf upon the distant, windward shore of the island plainly audible.

"Why have we stopped here?" Colonel Glinka said, bumping into him.

"Look there, Effendi!" Abdul whispered, gesturing toward a ledge not ten yards above their heads, where a burnoosed figure stood looking down upon them.

"And there—and there—and there!" Abdul pointed at other little ledges where similar ghostly sentries stood, barely visible in the gloom.

Colonel Glinka looked behind him and saw that there were others that they had passed within a very few feet of, standing upon every shelf and ledge that afforded a foot-hold above the trail. Dozens and dozens of them.

"Maybe we had better scram out of here, Joe," Abdul suggested.

"I perceive that you are trying to frighten me," Colonel Glinka said. "It won't work."

A stone rattled behind them.

"What was that?" Colonel Glinka demanded, turning around quickly. "Who's there?"

Something moved in the shadows, edging into the deeper shadows of the rocks. It was the pursuing female of earlier that afternoon.

Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar, in deep, abdominal disgust, groaned.

"Come here, you!" Colonel Glinka commanded. "Come on over here. Don't be afraid, my little one—I won't hurt you."

She advanced ever so little, a shapeless white wraith attracted by the syrup in his voice. He took one step forward. Carefully she retreated a step.

"Come now," Colonel Glinka said. "Surely it is time that we met. For you may as well know that I am now the master of this island. Now and forevermore, so far as you are concerned, my child. Perhaps I may let you help me clear up a little of its mystery."

She kept a maddening five or six feet between them, somehow. He could not lessen the distance without alarming her. And so he balanced himself upon the balls of his feet and lunged.

She gave a little cry, stumbled and fell, rolling over and over into a dark little depression beside the path as he clutched at her robe. The garment, still in his hand, unwound easily, peeling her very much like an apple.

"I beg your pardon," Colonel Glinka said, scrambling after her upon his hands and knees, groping for her with outstretched arms. "I beg—" His hand touched something which might have been her ankle. He seized it, held it for a moment, and then, shuddering, let it go, drawing back his hand as if it had been stabbed. By now the night was quite dark.

Colonel Glinka scrambled to his feet, half instinctively raised the deadly Malacca cane.

"Don't do it, Joe!" cried Abdul, coming up from behind him and shoving him hard.

The shot went wild, but the sound of it, echoing up and down the ravine, started an ominous, new sound, the growing, staccato murmur of many voices, a rattling of stones, a hundred different movements in the blackness.

Colonel