Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III It was very quiet on the top of the island. Below, on the windward side, the reef roared faintly, far away. You could just hear the rattle of the Ma- tunga's winches, down in the invisible harbour, as she unloaded her cargo. But it seemed almost silent up here, alone with the wind and the palms. " I've got to have a partner," said Scott, lifting his eyes to Dence's face and fixing him with a steady look. The man with a hidden history and a false name met that look fairly. It waked a pinching pain somewhere or other in his battered personality: there had been a time, though he could scarce believe it now, when he too was twenty-something; steady and straight and diamond-clear down to the bottom of his young soul. . . . Those waters were muddied now. Still, he could answer the unspoken question honestly. The eyes of English blue and the eyes of Northern grey read each other for a pregnant instant. Then Scott stretched out his hand, with an action as deliberate as the signing of a bond. Dence took it, and the rough pressure he gave was his promise. " I've come here on business," said Scott. ( T ) " Stop a bit," said the other, letting himself down on the grass and leaning against a palm-trunk. " I begin to think there was something after all in what that reptile Clay said to Anderson and myself. We didn't pay much attention to him: we only thought he was spyin' about because it was his nature to, and I had an idea you might be carryin' your money on your person—so I meant fo give you a hint. But let me tell you what he said." Scott, seated on the grass alongside, with his pipe going, listened, and nodded his head once or twice. " Not so far out," he said, when the recital was done. " I'm sorry it happened: I did think I was old enough to take ca...