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.