The troubled from which great events were to come began when Everard Dominey, who had been fighting his way through the scrub for the last three quarters of an hour towards those thin, spiral wisps of smoke, urged his pony to a last despairing effort and came crashing through the great oleander shrub to pitch forward on his head in the little clearing. It developed the next morning, when he found himself for the first time for many months on a truckle bed, between linen sheets, with a cool, bamboo-twisted roof between him and the relentless sun. He raised himself a little in the bed.
"Where the mischief am I?" he demanded.
A black boy, seated cross-legged in the entrance of the bands, rose to his feet, mumbled something and disappeared. In a few moments the tall, slim figure of a European, in spotless white riding clothes, stopped down and came over to Dominey's side.
"You are better?" he enquired politely,
"Yes, I am," was the somewhat brusque rejoinder. "Where the mischief am I, and who are you?"
The newcomer's manner stiffened. He was a person of dignified carriage, and his tone conveyed some measure of rebuke.
