On the summit of a little knoll,with a pipe between his teeth and his back against a palm-tree,Trent was lounging away an hour of the breathless night.Usually a sound sleeper,the wakefulness,which had pursued him from the instant his head had touched his travelling pillow an hour or so back,was not only an uncommon occurrence,but one which seemed proof against any effort on his part to overcome it.So he had risen and stolen away from the little camp where his companions lay wrapped in heavy slumber.They had closed their eyes in a dense and tropical darkness -so thick indeed that they had lit a fire,notwithstanding the stifling heat,to remove that vague feeling of oppression which chaos so complete seemed to bring with it.Its embers burnt now with a faint and sickly glare in the full flood of yellow moonlight which had fallen upon the country.From this point of vantage Trent could trace backwards their day's march for many miles,the white posts left by the surveyor even were visible,and in the background rose the mountains of Bekwando.It had been a hard week's work for Trent.He had found chaos,discontent,despair.The English agent of the Bekwando Land Company was on the point of cancelling his contract,the surveyors were spending valuable money without making any real attempt to start upon their undoubtedly difficult task.
Everywhere the feeling seemed to be that the prosecution of his schemes was an impossibility.The road was altogether in the clouds.
Trent was flatly told that the labour they required was absolutely unprocurable.Fortunately Trent knew the country,and he was a man of resource.From the moment when he had appeared upon the spot,things had begun to right themselves.He had found Oom Sam established as a sort of task-master and contractor,and had promptly dismissed him,with the result that the supply of Kru boys was instantly doubled.He had found other sources of labour and started them at once on clearing work,scornfully indifferent to the often-expressed doubts of the English surveyor as to possibility of making the road at all.He had chosen overseers with that swift and intuitive insight into character which in his case amounted almost to genius.With a half-sheet of notepaper and a pencil,he had mapped out a road which had made one,at least,of the two surveyors thoughtful,and had largely increased his respect for the English capitalist.Now he was on his way back from a tour almost to Bekwando itself by the route of the proposed road.Already the work of preparation had begun.Hundreds of natives left in their track were sawing down palm-trees,cutting away the bush,digging and making ready everywhere for that straight,wide thoroughfare which was to lead from Bekwando village to the sea-coast.Cables as to his progress had already been sent back to London.Apart from any other result,Trent knew that he had saved the Syndicate a fortune by his journey here.
The light of the moon grew stronger -the country lay stretched out before him like a map.With folded arms and a freshly-lit pipe Trent leaned with his back against the tree and fixed eyes.At first he saw nothing but that road,broad and white,stretching to the horizon and thronged with oxen-drawn wagons.Then the fancy suddenly left him and a girl's face seemed to be laughing into his -a face which was ever changing,gay and brilliant one moment,calm and seductively beautiful the next.He smoked his pipe furiously,perplexed and uneasy.One moment the face was Ernestine's,the next it was Monty's little girl laughing up at him from the worn and yellow tin-type.The promise of the one -had it been fulfilled in the woman?At least he knew that here was the one great weakness of his life.The curious flood of sentiment,which had led him to gamble for the child's picture,had merged with equal suddenness into passion at the coming of her later presentment.High above all his plans for the accumulation of power and wealth,he set before him now a desire which had become the moving impulse of his life -a desire primitive but overmastering -the desire of a strong man for the woman he loves.In London he had scarcely dared admit so much even to himself.Here,in this vast solitude,he was more master of himself -dreams which seemed to him the most beautiful and the most daring which he had ever conceived,filled his brain and stirred his senses till the blood in his veins seemed flowing to a new and wonderful music.Those were wonderful moments for him.
