“It is strange,” Hi said. “Whenever I come into this hut I have the feeling that there is somebody here. It is the way that this hammock-post catches the light.”
The sun was now fast dropping behind Melchior, so that it lit up the end of the hut where the rubbish had been thrown. Something sparkled on the floor beyond the rubbish. Hi picked it up. It was a little gold locket clipped to a rusty steel watch-chain. After wiping the locket, he opened it, with some trouble. It contained a tiny photograph, not so big as his thumbnail, of a young woman’s face. She was a handsome young woman, of the hawk brunette type.
“I suppose that this is his girl,” Hi thought, closing the locket. “He must have dropped this somehow in the dark; he’ll be glad to have it again.”
He dropped the locket on to one of the wooden stools, so that he might have it at hand when D. W. returned; then he sat in his hammock, thinking of Carlotta. “Early to-morrow,” he thought. “Early to-morrow, whatever happens, I shall get away from here. Even now, with luck, I might not be too late. But I simply must not be too late. I must be in time.”
As the light suddenly passed from the world at the dropping of the sun behind Melchior, he wondered whether after all he would be in time. It was hard to say what might have happened under a madman like Don Lopez. Supposing that the worst had happened? Supposing that he were not in time?
He was weary from the hardships of the journey, all his body was crying out for rest. He edged himself into his hammock, for the comfort of lying prone, and there fell asleep. He slept heavily, having still some arrears to make up, and yet, for all its soundness, his sleep was troubled with the sense that all was not well. Gradually, as his sleep weakened, he began to feel that there was an unhappiness, or something worse, close to him: someone in distress was there. “Ah,” he answered in his sleep, “it is you, Carlotta. All right, I’ll do my best to warn him and bring him. I’ll do my best, though I do seem to have muddled things.” Then, as his sleep weakened still more, he knew that it was not Carlotta who was there, but a man who had been there before.
“Yes,” he said, in his sleep, “there was a man in the hut this afternoon: so he is here again; well, what can I do for him? Where are you? Let’s have a look at you.”
He struggled out of his sleep to a knowledge of the waking world, which came upon him slowly, as another world, that had taken its place, moved away in fiery mist. He saw, or thought that he saw, the man standing near the hut entrance, looking at him, with sad eyes. “All right,” Hi cried.
“Is it supper-time? I’ve been asleep, but I’m awake. I’ll be up in one moment.” As he blinked and sat up, the figure faded away into the darkness behind it, which was now a blackness of leaves moving against stars. “It was only a dream, after all,” Hi said. “But it is odd how there always seems to be a man here. I suppose one gets to imagine these things.”
He came back fully to the world of the village, where now lamps and fires were burning, women singing and the tom-tom drumming. “I’ll see if D. W. has come back,” he said.