Let our friends sell no shares."
Then Trent went back and, hard as he had worked before, he surpassed
it all now. Far and wide he sent ever with the same inquiry - for
labour and stores. He spent money like water, but he spent from a
bottomless purse. Day after day Kru boys, natives and Europeans
down on their luck, came creeping in. Far away across the rolling
plain the straight belt of flint-laid road-bed stretched to the
horizon, one gang in advance cutting turf, another beating in the
small stones. The boy grew thin and bronzed, Trent and he toiled
as though their lives hung upon the work. So they went on till the
foremost gang came close to the forests, beyond which lay the
village of Bekwando.
Then began the period of the greatest anxiety, for Trent and the
boy and a handful of the others knew what would have sent half of
the natives flying from their work if a whisper had got abroad. A
few soldiers were drafted down from the Fort, arms were given out
to all those who could be trusted to use them and by night men
watched by the great red fires which flared along the path of their
labours. Trent and the boy took it by turns to watch, their
revolvers loaded by their side, and their eyes ever turned towards
that dark line of forest whence came nothing but the singing of
night birds and the calling of wild animals.
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