The three leaders are dead." Maurice Gordon had not lived four years on the West African coast in vain.

He took this for what it was worth.

But if he had acquired scepticism, he had lost his nerve.

He put about and sailed back to Loango.
"I wonder," he muttered, as he walked up from the beach to his office that same afternoon--"I wonder if Durnovo is among them ?" And he was conscious of a ray of hope in his mind.

He was a kind-hearted man, in his way, this Maurice Gordon of Loango; but he could not disguise from himself the simple fact that the death of Victor Durnovo would be a distinct convenience and a most desirable relief.