"What can we do?" I asked.

"Wait round here and pot him when he is coming back," said the youngster
cheerfully. "But we should let the girls know something, shouldn't we?
That old fool will tell them a garbled account that will frighten them
out of their wits. One of us had better go and try to quiet their
fears."

"You go then," I remarked. "I'll wait here till you come back."

Holman crept quietly toward the campfire, and I waited in the
undergrowth. The moon was rising in the east and a soft gray light wiped
out the intense blackness that had come upon the place after the short
twilight. The tops of the cliffs toward which we were journeying were
tipped by a brilliant thread of silver as the moon peeped above their
ramparts, and I crept deeper into the shadows as the full glory of the
glowing orb turned the night into day.

I had waited some thirty minutes for Holman when I noticed a movement
beneath a small bush some fifteen paces to my right. I watched the spot
without moving, and presently a dark figure crept out of the shelter and
moved cautiously toward the camp. Convinced that the visitor was Soma, I
pulled out my revolver and waited, wondering as I watched what he
intended to do.

The black figure came closer. He paused to listen to the sounds that
came from the fire, and as he lifted his head the moonlight fell across
his face, and I put the revolver back in my pocket.

"Kaipi," I murmured.