rent in the curtain of night. Red, too, was the flat, calm sea, save
northerly where a sand ridge gleamed. Tedge turned to search for its
outlying point. There was a pass here beyond which the reefs began
once more and stretched on, a barrier to the shoal inside waters. When
the skiff had drawn about the sand spit, the reflecting waters around
the _Marie_ had vanished, and the fire appeared as a fallen meteor
burning on the flat, black belt of encircling reef.

Tedge's murderous little eyes watched easterly. They must find the
other side of the tidal pass and go up it to strike off for the
distant shrimp camps with their story of the end of the _Marie
Louise_--boat and cargo a total loss on Au Fer sands.

Upon the utter sea silence there came a sound--a faint bawling of
dying cattle, of trampled, choked cattle in the fume and flames. It
was very far off now; and to-morrow's tide and wind would find nothing
but a blackened timber, a swollen, floating carcass or two--nothing
more.

But the black man could see the funeral pyre; the distant glare of it
was showing the whites of his eyes faintly to the master, when
suddenly he stopped rowing. A drag, the soft sibilance of a moving
thing, was on his oar blade. He jerked it free, staring.

"Lilies, boss--makin' out dis pass, too, lilies--"

"I see 'em--drop below 'em!" Tedge felt the glow of an unappeasable
anger mount to his temples. "Damn 'em--I see 'em!"

There they were, upright, tranquil, immense hyacinths--their