In my ears rang angry shouting, the sound of heavy blows rained upon that inner door, as I dashed out of the hut. Marjorie flashed by the front of the sheds and took a rocky path which led off steeply to the left. As I tore after her a man stepped out quickly from the angle of the hut to bar my passage. But without faltering in my stride I drove my elbow into his face and he slipped backwards, striking his head against the split log facing of the shed with a horrid crack. I did not stop to see what became of him but ran on, congratulating myself that I had laid him out without using the pistol which my right hand clutched in my pocket. For I knew that the sound of a shot would bring the whole horde buzzing about our ears.  
Daylight was coming now with great strides. The morning mists clung sluggishly about the lower part of the steep incline leading up from the hollow where the camp was situated. As we topped the path we came into view of the shores of a little cove and glimpsed a long, grey motor-launch that lay at anchor. This, as Marjorie told me afterwards, was Sturt Bay which, I remembered, the "Sailing Directions" had mentioned as the only practicable landing-place other than Horseshoe Bay on the island. In that deep hollow the sheds must have been invisible both from the land and the sea side. When, later on, Marjorie told me that Clubfoot's men, in their talk among themselves, always referred to the huts as "The Petrol Store," I thought I understood why such care had been taken to conceal the camp from prying eyes.
 
Now we were in the forest following a winding track. Though, on looking back, it seems to have been the height of foolhardiness, I do not think we could have acted otherwise. For it was essential that we should reach the high ground undiscovered before it was fully light and we might have wasted hours trying to find the way through these dense woods where, though day was at hand, the shadows of the night yet lingered.
 
The noises I had heard on the outskirts of the camp had ceased. The silence made me uneasy. We relaxed our pace to a walk and went along swiftly and softly, our feet making no sound on the spongy ground. Suddenly, from a clump of rich green ferns, not a pace away from me, a man's head arose. I did not require to see the heavily bruised features to recognise Custrin. If ever the intent to kill peered out of a man's face, it did from the quick, black eyes of the doctor of the Naomi.
 
It happened far quicker than it takes to write it down. I could not see his hands; but there was a warning rustle of the ferns, a sudden change in the face, which told me he was going to shoot. The index finger of my right hand was crooked round the trigger of my pistol as it lay in the side pocket of my jacket....
 
We fired together. Something "whooshed" by my ear. In accents of shrill surprise Custrin cried out: "Oh!" stared at me stupidly for the fraction of a second through the blue haze that drifted on the air between us, then pitched forward on his face into the clump of ferns. There was a horrid gush—a convulsive movement of the hands—and the body lay still. The woods seemed to ring with the report, and there was a smell of singed cloth in the air. The pocket of my jacket was smouldering....
 
Now silence descended once more upon the forest, broken only by a faintly audible drip! drip! from the drooping head at my feet. Then suddenly a distant hallo went echoing through the woods; another shout, much nearer at hand, answered it and was answered by another until the whole forest rang again.
 
I turned to Marjorie. White to the lips, she stood with her face averted from that limp form sprawling in the ferns.
 
"We must make a dash for it, partner!" said I.
 
Docilely, like a little child, she thrust her hand in mine.
 
"Don't go too fast!" she pleaded, "I'm—I'm—afraid of being left behind...."
 
Hand-in-hand, like the Babes in the Wood, we set off again through the forest, pelting headlong down the track. Unmolested w............