Then had begun the chase. He retreated up the pig-run before his
hunters, who were between him and the beach. How many there were,
he could not guess. There might have been one, or a hundred, for
aught he saw of them. That some of them took to the trees and
travelled along through the jungle roof he was certain; but at the
most he never glimpsed more than an occasional flitting of shadows.
No bow-strings twanged that he could hear; but every little while,
whence discharged he knew not, tiny arrows whispered past him or
struck tree-boles and fluttered to the ground beside him. They
were bone-tipped and feather shafted, and the feathers, torn from
the breasts of humming-birds, iridesced like jewels.

Once--and now, after the long lapse of time, he chuckled gleefully
at the recollection--he had detected a shadow above him that came
to instant rest as he turned his gaze upward. He could make out
nothing, but, deciding to chance it, had fired at it a heavy charge
of number five shot. Squalling like an infuriated cat, the shadow
crashed down through tree-ferns and orchids and thudded upon the
earth at his feet, and, still squalling its rage and pain, had sunk
its human teeth into the ankle of his stout tramping boot. He, on
the other hand, was not idle, and with his free foot had done what
reduced the squalling to silence. So inured to savagery has
Bassett since become, that he chuckled again with the glee of the
recollection.

What a night had followed! Small wonder that he had accumulated
such a virulence and variety of fevers, he thought, as he recalled
that sleepless night of torment, when the throb of his wounds was
as nothing compared with the myriad stings of the mosquitoes.
There had been no escaping them, and he had not dared to light a