strata to the regions of heat, is again thrown up to the

'The food was welcome, Baas,' he said. 'If you will listen to me I can repay hospitality with advice. You are a stranger here. Trouble comes, and if you are wise you will go back to the Berg.'

'I don't know what you mean,' I said, with an air of cheerful idiocy. 'But back to the Berg I go the first thing in the morning. I hate these stinking plains.'

'It were wise to go to-night,' he said, with a touch of menace in his tone.

'I can't,' I said, and began to sing the chorus of a ridiculous music-hall song-

'There's no place like home - but I'm afraid to go home in the dark.'

Laputa shrugged his shoulders, stepped over the bristling Colin, and went out. When I looked after him two minutes later he had disappeared.

CHAPTER IX THE STORE AT UMVELOS'

I sat down on a chair and laboured to collect my thoughts. Laputa had gone, and would return sooner or later with Henriques. If I was to remain alive till morning, both of them must be convinced that I was harmless. Laputa was probably of that opinion, but Henriques would recognize me, and I had no wish to have that yellow miscreant investigating my character. There was only one way out of it - I must be incapably drunk. There was not a drop of liquor in the store, but I found an old whisky bottle half full of methylated spirits. With this I thought I might raise an atmosphere of bad whisky, and for the rest I must trust to my meagre gifts as an actor.