amounted to madness. Joan could raise her hands to protect herself, he had lurched across the floor and seized her by the throat. His bulging eyes and gleaming teeth were within a few inches of her face, and she saw that he meant to kill her. Before He took in the situation at a glance, and with a single blow sent Conliffe reeling across the floor, to collapse upon the plush settee under the porthole. Then he bent over Joan, who was not unconscious, but lay sobbing convulsively where she had fallen. He raised her gently, so that her shoulders rested upon his knee and her She screamed once in her terror before his fingers compressed her throat to silence. She tried to tear his hands from her neck, but without success. In an ecstasy of rage Charlie battered her head against the door to which he had pinned her, cursing her and dishonouring her with every foul name that his gutter vocabulary could suggest. Fortunately her scream had been heard, or the murderous attack would have been successful. Peter Brown had gone below, sad-hearted, to meditate on his dilemma in solitude. The sound of a woman's scream brought him in an instant to his cabin door. He was guided to the scene by the persistent and suggestive hammering, and he burst into the Conliffes' cabin no more than in time. The door opened inward, and it was all that he could do to force an entrance. Charlie Conliffe released his grip on his wife's throat, and tried to prevent the entrance of the intruder. His wife slipped in a heap to the floor, overcome by the bitterness of her ordeal. Brown had to exert his utmost strength to prise the door open sufficiently to force his way inside. dark head was supported by his arm. The situation was embarrassing-more so than he knew. He held her so, waiting for her to recover; and as he waited, he glanced across at Conliffe, Conliffe, uncertain how he might take this interruption. But he saw that there was nothing more to be feared. Charlie was dazed, if not to some extent sobered, by the blow he had received. He lay back upon the lounge, looking with half-uncomprehending eyes at the scene before him. deed, even as Conliffe watched him, his eyes gradually closed, and his heavy breathing announced that he had fallen into a drunken sleep. In Peter turned his attention again to Mrs Conliffe. A wild rage rose within him at sight of the livid marks upon her white throat, and it was perhaps lucky for Charlie that he had ceased for the time to be an object worthy of attack. Joan's sobs gradually grew less violent and hysterical. She drew in the restoring air in deep sighs to her wide bosom, and her face began to wear a more natural colour and ex pression. Peter Brown passed his hand gently across her soft hair in a gesture meant to be soothing no more as one might comfort a hurt child. It had not the effect he intended. She started from him and struggled to her feet, a fresh horror on her face. Innocent of any wrong, Peter looked at her in surprise as she confronted him with heaving breast. How could he know that the agony she had passed through had been on his account, and that her recent discovery of her own feelings had lent sufficient colour to her husband's accusations to leave her with an uneasy sense of guilt? opened the door and held it for Peter Brown. He took the handle from her and closed it again. "Mrs Conliffe," he began, and his set face showed his determination to go through with what he had to say, "you need not be afraid to trust me indeed, you must trust me. The sounds I heard from outside and the marks I can see even now on your throat are enough to prove that it was no mere boisterousness. You can't stay here. The man is no longer responsible for what he does." Joan Conliffe listened, her eyes turned to the ground, nor did she raise them as she answered "You must. You can't stay do that," she cried, and in here with him." her anxiety she took his thin arm in both her hands. "Really I am quite safe. You don't know him as I do. When he wakes up he will have quite recovered. Probably he will have forgotten all about it. Don't bring him into any worse repute than he is in already. I can't bear it." "What was the cause of it, anyhow?" asked Peter, wavering as he had wavered that night in Cairo. How could she tell him? But women are quicker and more natural in deception than men, and he never doubted her answer. "He was angry because he thought that I believed he had stolen Lady Pilth's diamonds," she said. "Please go. I want to be alone." wish, so once again he was forced to shoulder a responsibility that went against his will. Joan Conliffe, left alone with her homicidal husband, crouched on the floor sobbing and shivering with the reaction. At last, with an effort, she regained her self-control. Dully, almost automatically, she rose. She adjusted her sleeping husband more comfortably upon the couch, placed a cushion behind his head, and looked round upon the disorder of the room. Almost gladly she busied herself with the task of getting In the face of her desire so plainly put there was nothing for Peter Brown to do but leave her. He saw that she was quite determined to stay with her husband, brute though he was, and he could not bring himself to put her story before the captain against her own it to its normal condition. (To be continued.) 66 ON JUNGLE TRAILS IN CEYLON. MAK! Mak! Pita! Wijja a game-watcher, together with -Ha-a-ak ! It is almost impossible to transliterate the noises made by the bullockdrivers as, perched on the poles of their carts, they urged the panting, swaying bullocks through the sticky mud of the so-called jungle "road." It was early in January, after the N.E. Monsoon rains had filled the tanks which now spilled across our track, and made travelling in this part of the district very difficult. I was out on a tour with the district Revenue Officer, and a hard time we had of it to get our baggage-carts along. We pushed, and shouted encouragement to the bullocks, as the carts sank axle - deep into the mud, while the monkeys overhead in the trees gibbered at us and mocked our efforts. We had started out with a modest retinue, consisting of a boy, a cook, a peon, and two baggage-carts. As we were travelling through a littleknown district where white men seldom go, and even the Revenue Officer visits only occasionally, the dwellers in the scattered villages through which we passed took considerable interest in us, and by the time we had been three days on the march our "tail" had increased by the addition of a dhoby, a milk-boy with two cows, two trackers, and a small boy I found in camp -) After four hours' very severe struggling, the carts were pushed and hauled on to higher ground, where the "going " was a bit better. The R.O. and myself were splashed with mud; but the carts could now be left to themselves, so we walked on ahead to the R.O.'s "circuit bungalow," where we were to have our midday breakfast. We had to wait some time before the carts arrived, and a heavy thunderstorm had come up before they reached the (com parative) shelter of the bungalow compound. Eventually we sat down to breakfast at about 2 P.M. The meal was a composite one, beginning with delicious omelette, and progressing through snipe cooked to a turn and the above-mentioned prawn curry, to wind up with toast and nutmeg jelly. In the middle of it, in walked quite unexpectedly the Policeman, accompanied by a Planter, who had come on a shooting trip. The Planter said he had meant to write to the R.O.-in fact, he thought that he had written-to say that he was coming, and having heard at district headquarters that the R.O. had left, he started in pursuit, knowing that if he "travelled light," with luck he should be able to overtake us. "By travelling light, I suppose you mean that I shall have to rig you out with clothes," commented the R.O. that the best way to get to know the jungle man is by going out shooting and fishing with him. You meet him as man to man, and he talks naturally to you. If you get him up before you, even for a very informal palaver, and are surrounded by clerks, interpreters, and such gentlemen, you never get at him. I always say: Go among the people yourself, and a gun and rod will be a far better introduction than an interpreter-" "Now he's off on his hobby!" jeered the Planter. "Why you can't call your Tours of Inspection' shooting - trips, as honestly they should be called, I don't know." The The Pipes and cheroots by this time had been lighted. storm still continued. company, after the heavy meal, was inclined to somnolence, when something splashed upon the Policeman's head. "There's that roof leaking!" he grumbled, pulling his chair a yard or two farther along the floor. "Thought you'd had it mended." "It was mended all right," said the R.O. drowsily, "but the elephants won't leave it alone. The keeper is getting quite sick about it. They come round here about once a week and strip the thatch off." |