“That note was the price of blood,” said Robinson.  “Oh, the black-hearted villains.  Tell me who they were, that is all; tell me but who they were!”

“The boy didn’t know.”

“There! it is always so.  The fools! they never know.”

“Stop a bit, captain, there is a clew (your own word).”

“Ay, and what is the clew?”

“As soon as ever the note was safe in his bosom he says:  ’I sold you, blind mate; I’d have given fifty sooner than not done this job.  Look here!’ says he, ‘I have sworn to have a life for each of these;’ and, captain,” said Jem, suddenly lowering his voice, “with that it seems he held up his right hand.”

“Well, yes! yes! eh!”

“And there were two fingers a-missing on it!”

“Ah!”

“Now those two fingers are the ones you chopped off with your cutlass the night when the tent was attacked.”

“Why, Tom, what is this? you never told me of this,” cried George.

“And which are in my pocket.”

“In your pocket?” said George, drawing away from him.

“Ay, farmer! wrapped up in silver paper, and they shall never leave my pocket till I have fitted them on the man, and seen him hung or shot with them two pickers and stealers tied round his bloodthirsty, mercenairy, aass-aassinating neck, say that I said it.”

George.  “Jacky, show us the way out of this wood.”

Kalingalunga bowed assent, but he expressed a wish to take with him some of the ashes of the wambiloa.  George helped him.

Robinson drew Jem aside.  “You shouldn’t have mentioned that before George; you have disgusted him properly.”

“Oh, hang him! he needn’t be so squeamish; why, I’ve had ’em salt—­”

“There, there! drop it, Jem, do!”

“Captain! are you going to let them take us out of the wood before we have hunted it for that scoundrel?”

“Yes, I am.  Look here, Jem, we are four, and he is one, but a double-barreled gun is an awkward enemy in a dark wood.  No, Jem, we will outwit him to the last.  We will clear the wood and get back to the camp.  He doesn’t know we have got a clew to him.  He will come back without fear, and we will nail him with the fifty-pound note upon him.  And then—­Jack Ketch.”

The whole party was now on the move, led by Kalingalunga, bearing the sacred ashes.

“What on earth is he going to do with them?”

The chief heard this query, and looking back said gravely, “He take them to ’Milmeridien’;” and the party followed Jacky, who twisted and zigzagged about the bush till, at last, he brought them to a fairy spot, whose existence in that rugged wood none of them had dreamed possible.  It was a long, open glade, meandering like a river between two deep, irregular fringes of the drooping acacia, and another lovely tree which I only know by its uncouth, unmelodious, scientiuncular name—­the eucalyptus.  This tree, as well as the drooping acacia, leaned over the ground with long leaves like disheveled hair.