grasping his revolver, and at the very same instant, as it seemed to
him, they came into violentcollision. Both shouted with surprise. A

loud explosion took place between them; a roar of red fire, thick
smoke; and Kayerts, deafened and blinded, rushed back thinking: "I am

hit--it's all over." He expected the other to come round--to gloat
over his agony. He caught hold of an upright of the roof--"All over!"

Then he heard a crashing fall on the other side of the house, as if
somebody had tumbled headlong over a chair--then silence. Nothing

more happened. He did not die. Only his shoulder felt as if it had
been badly wrenched, and he had lost his revolver. He was disarmed and

helpless! He waited for his fate. The other man made no sound. It was
a stratagem. He was stalking him now! Along what side? Perhaps he was

taking aim this very minute!
After a few moments of an agony frightful and absurd, he decided to go

and meet his doom. He was prepared for every surrender. He turned the
corner, steadying himself with one hand on the wall; made a few paces,

and nearly swooned. He had seen on the floor, protruding past the
other corner, a pair of turned-up feet. A pair of white naked feet in

red slippers. He felt deadly sick, and stood for a time in profound
darkness. Then Makola appeared before him, saying quietly: "Come

along, Mr. Kayerts. He is dead." He burst into tears of gratitude; a
loud, sobbing fit of crying. After a time he found himself sitting in

a chair and looking at Carlier, who lay stretched on his back. Makola
was kneeling over the body.

"Is this your revolver?" asked Makola, getting up.
"Yes," said Kayerts; then he added very quickly, "He ran after me to

shoot me--you saw!"
"Yes, I saw," said Makola. "There is only one revolver; where's his?"

"Don't know," whispered Kayerts in a voice that had become suddenly
very faint.

"I will go and look for it," said the other, gently. He made the round
along the verandah, while Kayerts sat still and looked at the corpse.

Makola came back empty-handed, stood in deep thought, then stepped
quietly into the dead man's room, and came out directly with a

revolver, which he held up before Kayerts. Kayerts shut his eyes.
Everything was going round. He found life more terrible and difficult

than death. He had shot an unarmed man.
After meditating for a while, Makola said softly, pointing at the dead

man who lay there with his right eye blown out--
"He died of fever." Kayerts looked at him with a stony stare. "Yes,"

repeated Makola, thoughtfully, stepping over the corpse, "I think he
died of fever. Bury him to-morrow."

And he went away slowly to his expectant wife, leaving the two white
men alone on the verandah.

Night came, and Kayerts sat unmoving on his chair. He sat quiet as if
he had taken a dose of opium. The violence of the emotions he had

passed through produced a feeling of exhausted serenity. He had
plumbed in one short afternoon the depths of horror and despair, and

now found repose in the conviction that life had no more secrets for
him: neither had death! He sat by the corpse thinking; thinking very

actively, thinking very new thoughts. He seemed to have broken loose
from himself altogether. His old thoughts, convictions, likes and

dislikes, things he respected and things he abhorred, appeared in
their true light at last! Appeared contemptible and childish, false

and ridiculous. He revelled in his new wisdom while he sat by the man
he had killed. He argued with himself about all things under heaven

with that kind of wrong-headed lucidity which may be observed in some
lunatics. Incidentally he reflected that the fellow dead there had

been a noxious beast anyway; that men died every day in thousands;
perhaps in hundreds of thousands--who could tell?--and that in the

number, that one death could not possibly make any difference;
couldn't have any importance, at least to a thinking creature. He,

Kayerts, was a thinking creature. He had been all his life, till that
moment, a believer in a lot of nonsense like the rest of mankind--who

are fools; but now he thought! He knew! He was at peace; he was
familiar with the highest wisdom! Then he tried to imagine himself

dead, and Carlier sitting in his chair watching him; and his attempt
met with such unexpected success, that in a very few moments he became

not at all sure who was dead and who was alive. This extraordinary
achievement of his fancy startled him, however, and by a clever and

timely effort of mind he saved himself just in time from becoming
Carlier. His heart thumped, and he felt hot all over at the thought of

that danger. Carlier! What a beastly thing! To compose his now
disturbed nerves--and no wonder!--he tried to whistle a little. Then,

suddenly, he fell asleep, or thought he had slept; but at any rate
there was a fog, and somebody had whistled in the fog.

He stood up. The day had come, and a heavy mist had descended upon the
land: the mist penetrating, enveloping, and silent; the morning mist

of tropical lands; the mist that clings and kills; the mist white and
deadly, immaculate and poisonous. He stood up, saw the body, and threw

his arms above his head with a cry like that of a man who, waking from
a trance, finds himself immured forever in a tomb. "Help! . . . . My

God!"
A shriek inhuman, vibrating and sudden, pierced like a sharp dart the

white shroud of that land of sorrow. Three short, impatient screeches
followed, and then, for a time, the fog-wreaths rolled on,

undisturbed, through a formidable silence. Then many more shrieks,
rapid and piercing, like the yells of some exasperated and ruthless

creature, rent the air. Progress was calling to Kayerts from the
river. Progress and civilization and all the virtues. Society was

calling to its accomplished child to come, to be taken care of, to be
instructed, to be judged, to be condemned; it called him to return to

that rubbish heap from which he had wandered away, so that justice
could be done.

Kayerts heard and understood. He stumbled out of the verandah, leaving
the other man quite alone for the first time since they had been

thrown there together. He groped his way through the fog, calling in
his ignorance upon the invisible heaven to undo its work. Makola

flitted by in the mist, shouting as he ran--
"Steamer! Steamer! They can't see. They whistle for the station. I go

ring the bell. Go down to the landing, sir. I ring."
He disappeared. Kayerts stood still. He looked upwards; the fog rolled

low over his head. He looked round like a man who has lost his way;
and he saw a dark smudge, a cross-shaped stain, upon the shifting

purity of the mist. As he began to stumble towards it, the station
bell rang in a tumultuous peal its answer to the impatient clamour of

the steamer.
The Managing Director of the Great Civilizing Company (since we know

that civilization follows trade) landed first, and incontinently lost
sight of the steamer. The fog down by the river was exceedingly dense;

above, at the station, the bell rang unceasing and brazen.
The Director shouted loudly to the steamer:

"There is nobody down to meet us; there may be something wrong, though
they are ringing. You had better come, too!"

And he began to toil up the steep bank. The captain and the
engine-driver of the boat followed behind. As they scrambled up the

fog thinned, and they could see their Director a good way ahead.
Suddenly they saw him start forward, calling to them over his

shoulder:--"Run! Run to the house! I've found one of them. Run, look
for the other!"

He had found one of them! And even he, the man of varied and startling
experience, was somewhat discomposed by the manner of this finding.

He stood and fumbled in his pockets (for a knife) while he faced
Kayerts, who was hanging by a leather strap from the cross. He had

evidently climbed the grave, which was high and narrow, and after
tying the end of the strap to the arm, had swung himself off. His toes

were only a couple of inches above the ground; his arms hung stiffly
down; he seemed to be standingrigidly at attention, but with one

purple cheek playfully posed on the shoulder. And, irreverently, he
was putting out a swollen tongue at his Managing Director.

THE RETURN
The inner circle train from the City rushed impetuously out of a

black hole and pulled up with a discordant, grinding racket in the
smirched twilight of a West-End station. A line of doors flew open and

a lot of men stepped out headlong. They had high hats, healthy pale
faces, dark overcoats and shiny boots; they held in their gloved hands

thin umbrellas and hastily folded evening papers that resembled stiff,
dirty rags of greenish, pinkish, or whitish colour. Alvan Hervey