3o8 TROPIC DAYS 



the leafage as from the beach, and on the instant the 

 jungle had soundlessly absorbed the affrighted pair. 

 The handful of fire and the mutilated kangaroo remained 

 as the only evidences of the handiwork of man. 



What of the intruder ? The cry was almost too 

 weird to be human. Again it thrilled through the 

 leafage, a trifle stronger, and seemed to convey a threat 

 commingled with a prayer for succour. 



The scene held me. I was powerless, but not indif- 

 ferent ; capable of sight, incapable of action or utterance. 

 Something in the tone of the voice told of a member of 

 my own race in sore distress. Yet I could not respond 

 to his appeal or move to his aid. 



Half an hour of intense silence passed, and then a 

 lusty shout startled the air. Surely, I thought, the 

 wayfarer who makes such outcry in this unpeopled 

 wilderness is an uncouth fellow who has lost his way 

 and thinks to dialogue with echoes for relief of loneliness. 

 Presently the cracking of branchlets and a rumble of 

 discontented phrases told of someone blundering along 

 through the mangroves. Accustomed to the gentle 

 sounds and the delicious silence of the jungle, the clumsy 

 noises irritated while preparing me for the sight of the 

 intruder — a big, aggressive, weather-scored man, his 

 only clothing a pair of short pants of canvas, stained with 

 wear and stiff and whitened with frost like sea-salt. 

 The ocean had but an hour ago cast him like its scum 

 on the beach. 



He burst on the scene to plunge his broken lips into 

 the water at my feet. Like the natives, he drank long 

 and noisily, and when his thirst was allajxd called to 

 an imaginary' mate — "Pietro, Pietro !" curi^ed frct-ly 

 when no answer came, and whimpered like a babe. 



Huge of body, strong of limb, bully and brute stamped 

 on his coarse features, yet did his dread of loneUness 



