It was some fishermen collecting the catch from their lobster pots who came upon Gregory’s body the following morning. Had he remained conscious a little longer he might have seen against the star-spangled sky the dark bulk of the island towards which the aftermath of the hurricane had carried him, for its volcanic cliffs rose sheer and high from a narrow strip of beach. Luckily for him it was not upon the beach that he had been washed up, otherwise he might have remained there unnoticed until the birds had picked his carcass clean. A wave had thrown him into a shallow pool on the barrier reef, between which and the shore lay a half-mile-wide stretch of placid water. The lobster pots were on the lagoon side of the reef and could be reached only in a small boat which had to be manœuvred through a narrow channel from the sea. It was while the little boat was nosing its way through that one of the men in it caught sight of Gregory’s head and shoulders protruding from the pool.
Scrambling across the rocks, they bent above him in a chattering group. At first they thought him dead, but after a brief examination the eldest among them declared that his spirit still inhabited his body; so they took him to the larger vessel which had brought them to the outer side of the reef, and set about endeavouring to revive him.
Their methods were primitive but effective. Having stripped him naked they threw him face down across the low gunwale with his head hanging over the side; then they proceeded to pummel and slap him all over. The treatment restored his circulation and caused him to spew up much of the water he had swallowed; but when his mind began dimly to grope for its surroundings again, it was for a long time conscious only of his body as one universal ache. This was hardly surprising as, apart from the rawness of his internal membranes caused by the salt water, he had suffered severely from having been thrown up on the reef. Two of his ribs had been broken, the back of his skull fractured and in a score of places he had been terribly bruised.
When his rescuers heard his breath whistling regularly between his teeth, and saw his shoulder muscles twitching from his retching, they pulled him inboard, laid him on the bottom boards in the stern, threw his clothes over him in a heap to protect him from the sun, and went about their own business. Staring upwards. Gregory took in the fact that the one of their number they had left behind to tend the tiller looked like a Chinaman, then he again lapsed into unconsciousness.
When next he came to, he was lying on a mat bed with a light cotton covering over him. As he opened his eyes there was a slight stir beside him. Another Chinese face bent over his and he was given a few mouthfuls of a pleasant-tasting drink; but no sooner had he moved his head than an excruciating twinge shot through it and his senses once more ebbed away in a wave of pain.
For most of the four days that followed he was either in a drug-induced sleep or delirious; but during his few lucid intervals he gathered that he was in a small, clean, sparsely furnished room that had a vaguely oriental atmosphere.
When his thoughts at length became intermittently coherent, actual memories of his immediate past began to mingle with frightful nightmares, in which he was again upon the sinking yacht or struggling in turbulent seas. At first he could not bring himself to believe that these were anything other than appalling dreams. Yet as his mind became clearer it demanded to know how otherwise he could be where he was and physically in such a shocking state.
Eventually he rallied his strength enough to question the man who was looking after him, but the oriental spoke no English. Having spent the best part of a year in China in the early nineteen-thirties, Gregory had learned to speak ‘pidgin’ fairly fluently and picked up a smattering of ‘Mandarin’. With an effort he managed to recall a few words of the latter, but they proved insufficient to make himself understood.
The attempt had taken a lot out of him, so he abandoned it and drifted off to sleep. When he woke there was another Chinaman sitting on the chair beside his bed, whose face he recalled having seen several times while he was semi-delirious. This one was better dressed; his blouse was of blue silk and he wore a round silk skull-cap. He appeared to be about forty years of age and his grave face was that of an educated man. Hoping for better luck, Gregory addressed him.
He immediately stood up, bowed ceremoniously, and said with a lisp but in good English, ‘This person is Ho-Ping. He has the honour to be your doctor. It has been his difficult privilege to restrain your spirit from joining those of your distinguished ancestors. Informed by the menial who attends you that your excellent mind has regained its clarity, this one hastened to bring you reassurance regarding you condition. The danger of your honourable spirit leaving your admirably proportioned body is now passed; but the meagre talents of this unworthy practitioner will require the co-operation of your obviously sensible self if the numerous injuries inflicted on you by evil chance are to be quickly healed. It is deferentially prescribed that you should refrain from exerting your muscles for some time to come, and that for the present you should talk very little.’1
Gregory thanked him, introduced himself, and, in a half-cracked, husky voice, asked the things he most urgently wanted to know.
In reply Dr. Ping confirmed that his patient was on a Pacific island and had been rescued from its barrier reef when three parts drowned; but he had heard nothing of any recent wreck, and he was quite certain that no other survivors, or bodies, from it had been washed up.
‘What is the name of this island?’ Gregory inquired.
Dr Ping hesitated a second, then he said. ‘It is not very large, and it is of no importance whatever. In fact, it is rightly considered unworthy of being named, except on large-scale nautical charts. On those it is referred to as Leper Settlement Number Six.’
Refraining from comment on this depressing piece of information, Gregory croaked, ‘Is it one of a large group?’
‘Very large.’ Ho-Ping’s pleasant face broke into a placid smile. ‘The Manihikis are spread over an area greater than that of France and Germany together; but they are few in number, and so widely scattered that most of them are further from their nearest neighbours than London is from the coast of France. To reach any other land from here it would be necessary to cross about one hundred and forty miles of ocean.’
‘In that case, as I was the only person to be washed up here, it seems certain that no one else could possibly have survived the wreck.’
The smile left Dr. Ping’s face as though it had been wiped off with a towel. He bowed again. ‘It is to be feared that your discerning statement is unquestionably correct. And now, please, permit the observation that further talking may retard recovery.’
Gregory replied with a slow nod, and as the doctor left him turned over with his face towards the wall. He knew the worst now. His nightmare fears were only too well founded. His beloved Erika was dead. So too were gallant old Pellinore and all the rest. He had other friends in England and scattered up and down the world, but weighed in the balance against this terrible double blow they hardly counted. He felt as if his heart had been ripped out of his body. Life could never be the same again. After prolonged and agonised thought he decided that he now had nothing worth living for, so he did not want to recover. He would rather die.
But he did not die. His lack of the will to live slowed up his recovery, but his lean, sinewy body, deep lungs and strong heart mended him physically despite his mental wounds. For days on end he lay doing nothing, refusing to amuse himself with the puzzles and Chinese picture books that Ho-Ping brought him, and politely declining the doctor’s offers to teach him Ma-jong or play chess. Yet at length the time came when he had to face the fact that he was quite well enough to get up.
Reluctantly, one afternoon, he allowed the doctor to lead him from his room and make him comfortable in a chair that the servant, whose name he now knew to be Chung, had placed just outside the door for him. His utter lack of interest had so far stifled any desire to find out about his surroundings; so he knew only from casual glances through his window that the building in which he lived must be high up on the side of a valley, as nothing could be seen from it except a steep, barren cliff topped with sun-scorched undergrowth, about half a mile away.
Now he could see the whole panorama, and he was considerably surprised by it. Below him lay a land-locked harbour partly fringed with palms, but evidently deep enough to take an ocean-going tramp, as on one side of it there was a hundred-yard-long wharf, with cranes for unloading and a row of warehouses. Tied up to the wharf, there was a grey-painted vessel that looked like an obsolete destroyer from which the guns had been removed; while near-by were moored a number of Chinese junks, one of which had a dragon’s head prow and was elaborately painted and gilded. At first he could not make out how the shipping had got into the port, as from the angle at which he was looking down he could see no entrance to it, but the departure of a junk disclosed that it was through a narrow canyon between two towering cliffs, which concealed the basin from the sea.
It occurred to Gregory at once what a perfect place it would be for a pirates’ lair; and it might well have been used for that purpose in the days when the buccaneers, having been driven from the Spanish Main, had taken to roving the South Seas.
Turning his head he glanced at the building behind him, and saw that it was a long, one-storied, flat-roofed block, of which his own room made about one-twelfth part. It looked strictly utilitarian, being built of concrete slabs that had been whitewashed over, and it had been erected on a wide flat ledge of rock that jutted out from the cliff face. Twenty feet from where Gregory was sitting the cliff dropped sheer away, and a few yards behind the building it reared upwards with almost equal steepness; but higher up some trees had found enough earth to take root in, and as they grew outwards at an angle the foliage of the branches of the largest gave to the building some shade from the sun.
After a moment he noticed that at each end of the terrace there was an eight-foot-high wire mesh fence, which gave the impression that the place was a prison compound; so he said to the doctor: ‘What is the idea of having your sanitorium in a cage? Don’t you allow your patients to go out?’
The Chinaman shrugged. ‘This is not in the ordinary sense a sanitorium. It is more in the nature of an institution in which we can suitably entertain—er, immigrants.’
‘Really!’ Gregory raised his eyebrows. ‘Since you say the island is a small one, it seems rather surprising that you should have immigrants in sufficient numbers to need a special clearance station for them.’
‘Immigrants is, perhaps, hardly the right word. From time to time other vessels have been lost off our coast. This building was erected to accomodate their survivors.’
‘It doesn’t look as if it could hold very many.’
‘Because you were severely injured, alone and your clothes indicated that you were a person of quality, you were put in one of the cubicles; but the greater part of the building consists of a large dormitory-mess room with bunks for thirty, and it is most unusual for ships with crews exceeding that number to enter these waters. Happily, too, so little shipping of any kind comes into this vicinity that wrecks are very infrequent, but it is convenient to have a place like this in which to put up such castaways as are driven on to our shores.’
‘I still don’t see the reason for making it a prisoners’ cage,’ Gregory persisted.
Dr. Ping made a deprecatory gesture. ‘As soon as we can, we ship those whom fate selects as its occupants to San Francisco; but the steamer that plies between here and there is at our disposal only once in every four or five months. Experience has taught us that our uninvited guests are apt to become restless should their departure be delayed for more than a few weeks, and we do not consider it desirable that they should roam the island at will. The electrified fence restrains any temptation they may feel to do so.’
When the doctor had bowed himself away, Gregory suddenly realised that, after a lapse of weeks, his normally active brain had again begun to function. It was asking all sorts of questions, some of which had been simmering in his subconscious for days past and others resulting from his emergence on to the terrace that afternoon.
Anyone washed up on a South Sea island would, on coming to, normally have expected to find themselves being cared for by natives in a palm-leaf hut, or, if particularly fortunate, in a white man’s missionary station. How did it come about that he was being looked after by Chinese?
He knew of course, that on nearly every island of any size hard-working and thrifty Chinese traders had established themselves as store-keepers, but they did not run free hostels for ship-wrecked mariners, and had little in common with cultured Ho-Ping.
And there was much more to it than that. The fact that all castaways were brought as a matter of routine to this hostel staffed by Chinese indicated that they controlled the whole island. The junks, and particularly the gorgeously decorated one, moored down in the intriguingly secret harbour could be taken as further evidence in support of such a supposition. Yet Gregory, who rather prided himself on his general knowledge, felt sure that China did not own any islands in the middle of the Pacific.
Again, why these precautions against uninvited visitors getting to know anything about the place? He had made no comment on Dr. Pin’s statement that the wire fence was electrified, but it was that more than anything else which had galvanised his own brain out of its inertia. What was going on here that either the suave doctor, or some bigger shot who employed him, was taking such drastic precautions to hide?
It occurred to him that as the place was a leper settlement their object might be to prevent rash and ignorant seamen going among the lepers and contracting their disease. But he knew that leprosy can be caught only through long and intimate association with the afflicted; so that did not seem a really adequate answer.
During the days that followed he continued at odd intervals to puzzle over the matter while gazing down at the port. Often for hours at a stretch, particularly during the midday heat, it was deserted, and such activity as he did see there told him nothing. With one exception, it was limited to the occasional arrival or departure of some of the junks, which obviously constituted a fishing fleet and were entirely manned by Chinamen.
The exception occurred on the third day after he had left his room, by which time he had recovered the use of his legs sufficiently to walk up and down the terrace. Down an avenue of palms that led inland from the harbour appeared a palanquin borne on the shoulders of eight trotting men. As it came closer he could see the sun shining on its brilliantly lacquered roof, and gaily embroidered silk curtains. When it was set down on the waterfront the curtains parted and three people got out. Two were small boys who appeared to be between eight and ten years of age. Both were richly dressed in traditional Chinese costumes and wore round hats with turned-up brims. The third was a woman in a plain blue blouse and black trousers, and evidently their amah.
They were received most deferentially by an important-looking personage whom, from the fact that he directed all activities in the port, Gregory rightly assumed to be the Harbour-Master. He had been accompanied from the small building which was evidently his office by two men dressed in clothes of somewhat better quality than those worn by the ordinary coolies who manned the junks, and they also bowed deeply to the children.
The bearers of the palanquin picked it up and set off at a trot, leaving the little group about the two boys the only people to be seen in the vicinity. With the Harbour-Master leading, and the amah bringing up the rear, they walked along the deserted wharf towards the beautiful dragon-prowed junk, which was moored at its far end.
The hillside from which Gregory was watching was on the opposite side of the harbour and he was over a quarter of a mile away; but in the clear atmosphere he felt certain that his eyes could not have deceived him about what followed, although it happened very swiftly.
When the party was half-way along the wharf a door opened in one of the warehouses they had just passed, a man thrust his head out and—evidently in a low voice, as the amah was the only one to turn round—called something to her. Halting uncertainly she hesitated for a moment, then on his beckoning urgently to her, she walked back to join him. When they had exchanged a few sentences he took her by the arm, pulled her into the dark interior of the shed and quickly closed its door.
Unsuspecting of what had happened, the remainder of the party walked on. When they reached the dragon-prowed junk the Harbour-Master’s two companions disappeared behind it, to emerge a moment later in a small gaily-decorated sampan. The two boys had watched the operation with keen interest, and it was only when they started down the steps to which the sampan had been brought that they missed their nurse. As they turned to the Harbour-Master it was evident from their gestures that they were questioning him about her disappearance, but apparently his answers satisfied them as they allowed themselves to be bowed into the boat without her. One of the men in it hoisted its brightly-coloured sail, and after a single tack it disappeared through the narrow cleft in the cliffs that Gregory knew must lead to the sea. Meanwhile the pompous-looking Harbour-Master, mopping the perspiration from his red face with a handkerchief, had walked back to his office and re-entered it, leaving the harbour once more deserted.
For a while Gregory ruminated on possible explanations for what he had seen. The most likely seemed to be that the man who had pulled the amah into the shed was a frustrated lover. Perhaps her duties made it impossible for her to meet him in the evenings, or she did not like him enough to do so, and he had seized on this opportunity to get her to himself for an hour or two, counting on her influence with her charges being sufficient to restrain them from giving away to her employer that she had left them during the afternoon. In any case, Gregory felt, it was no business of his and, somnolent from the heat, he soon afterwards dropped off to sleep.
When he woke the harbour was still deserted, and soon afterwards he went into his room; so he did not see the amah come out of the shed or the two boys return from their afternoon’s sailing trip, and he thought no more of the matter. Neither did he connect it with the fact that Ho-Ping did not come in as usual to see him that evening, nor that on the following day both the doctor and Chung were unusually abrupt in manner and seemed either to have quarrelled or been upset by something.
After he had been out of bed for a little over a fortnight he slowly became conscious that to his grief there was now added another cause for depression, in that he was virtually a prisoner. It was not that he had ever been a devotee of violent exercise. On the contrary, in normal circumstances he would have been quite content to lounge about on a sunny terrace for a week or two without thought of leaving it; but the fact that he could not do so if he wanted to had begun to rile him.
He still had no inclination whatever to get back to England and pick up again the threads of his shattered life. In fact he dreaded the ordeal, but he recognised now that there could be no escape from his having to do so sometime; and, irked by his subconscious sense of captivity, he tackled Ho-Ping on how soon he was likely to be able to leave.
The doctor told him that as the steamer had left the port only a few weeks before his arrival, it was hardly to be expected that it would return, take on its cargo, and be ready to sail again in less than three months.
Gregory accepted the information with a shrug. ‘That’s all right by me. I’m in no hurry to get home.’ But after a moment he added, ‘All the same, I trust you don’t expect me to remain cooped up here all that time.’
‘It would be distressing for us both should you fail to reconcile yourself to doing so,’ Dr. Ping answered placidly.
‘Oh, come! All I wish to do is to go for a walk now and again, and see something of the island.’
‘That is understandable, but most regretfully out of the question.’
‘Why?’ inquired Gregory with a frown.
‘It is preferred that our guests should not mingle with our people.’
‘What harm do you suppose that I could possibly do them?’
‘None. None whatever; but we are great observers of custom in this place and it would be contrary to custom; so I am afraid you must abide by it.’
‘Now look here,’ Gregory said firmly. ‘If I were a trader who might corrupt your islanders by selling them unmatured whisky, I could understand your point of view. Even if I were a lusty young fo’c’sle hand who was likely to start a not by seducing one of the village maidens, there might be something to it. But I have neither the means nor desire to create trouble of any kind.’
‘That is self-evident,’ Ho-Ping hastening to assure him. ‘Indeed, it was apparent from the first that you are a most superior person. It is for that reason I have honoured myself by seeking your company with more frequency than my medical duties demanded. Although you are now fully recovered, with your permission, I shall continue to devote such of my time as I can to you in the hope that my visits may help a little to alleviate your boredom.’
Gregory smiled. ‘Thanks, Doctor. You have been very kind to me. I think, this offer too, of yours might be the means of overcoming our difficulty. Whatever the objections to my leaving the compound on my own, there can surely be none to my going for an occasional walk in your company.’
‘Ah, if that were only possible, how pleasant it would be.’ The doctor shook his head sadly. ‘But most unfortunately I suffer from a weak heart, and all unnecessary exertion is forbidden to me.’
Since Dr. Ping walked up the zigzag path in the steep cliff-face on his daily visits and had never appeared to be unduly affected when he reached the terrace, Gregory felt quite certain that he was lying. However, apart from politely commiserating with the doctor on his disability, he forbore to comment. Neither did he suggest that he should be accompanied on walks by Chung, or someone else, in order to ensure his good behaviour. It had been made unmistakably clear that whatever he might say, he was not going to be allowed out of the cage.
That didn’t worry him particularly, as he still lacked sufficient interest in things to care whether he left it or not. But during the week that followed he could not help wondering from time to time what could be going on in the island that its inhabitants were so anxious to prevent strangers from finding out.
One morning, soon after dawn, he woke with the same question in mind. Having pondered it for some ten minutes he decided to get up and investigate; so he dressed and went out on to the terrace. Below him the harbour lay veiled in mist and one great rocky promontory still threw a heavy shadow, but soon the mounting sun would glare down into every corner of it through another long tropical day.
As far as Gregory knew, no one except himself and Chung lived in the block, but he thought he would first make certain of that. A few days earlier he had taken a cursory look at the empty cubicles and at the big dormitory. Now he tiptoed through the latter to the far end of the building, where the kitchen quarters were situated. Long practice had enabled him to move as silently as a cat, and a swift examination showed him that the door to the galley was not locked. Very gently he eased it open and looked in. With a domestic economy typical of the East, Chung, being a servant, had no room of his own, but lay sleeping soundly on a mat that he had unrolled along the floor. Through a gauze screen door on the far side of the galley Gregory could see the scullery, and a window in its wall. As that wall formed the far end of the block it was clear that there were no other rooms further on, and no one else sleeping in it.
Soundlessly, Gregory re-closed the door, tiptoed back the way he came, and again went out on to the terrace. Advancing to its edge, he peered over. It dropped sheer for about twenty feet, then came a much narrower terrace barely two yards wide. Along its outer edge ran the high wire-mesh fence; so even if he had been able to scramble down to the lower ledge he would still have been inside the cage.
Turning, he walked quietly round to the back of the block, but he had already guessed what he would find. As he expected, the fence was there too, barring the way to any prospect of climbing the last fifty feet of cliff. Unbroken, except for the gate at the north end of the terrace, it entirely surrounded the building.
Being methodical by habit Gregory next made a careful examination of the gate. He was now not at all suprised to find that its lock would defy anyone not equipped with a cracksman’s kit; and his knowledge of electrical fences was sufficient to tell him that without proper implements it would be impossible to cut off or short circuit the current, as it was laid on from a generating plant housed in a small concrete structure outside the compound.
Nothing of the least importance hung on the result of his reconnaissance, so he felt little disappointment at having failed to find an easy way out of his prison. For some time past he had recognised that the real prison in which he was confined lay not in any fence, but in his own mind. Freedom to explore the island could not break down the barriers of sorrow that now walled him in from the joys of life, and with the grim thought that it did not really matter to him how he spent the next three months—or the next ten years—he went back to bed.
It was therefore very probable that but for a false move by Dr. Ping, Gregory’s mental indifference to the world about him would have led to his resigning himself to remaining in the cage until the steamer could take him to San Francisco. As it was, soon after the doctor arrived that afternoon he came out to Gregory and said with an asperity quite unusual in him:
‘Honoured Sir. Chung tells me that when getting up this morning, he saw you through the window of the kitchen making close examination of the gate in the fence. Already I have courteously intimated to you that it is contrary to our custom to allow our guests outside this cage. I have now to inform you that any attempt to get out is definitely forbidden. Moreover, it would be highly dangerous, as the fence carries an electric charge strong enough to inflict serious injury.’
Something of Gregory’s old belligerence stirred within him. The muscles of his lean face tightened, and he said, ‘If I wanted to get out of this place I should get out. It would take more than an electric fence to stop me.’
Ho-Ping bowed, ‘That may be true. Therefore I must ask you to give me your word that you will not try to escape, but accept the very mild form of captivity imposed, for as long as you must remain here.’
‘What if I refuse?’
‘That would imply an intention on your part to assault Chung with the object of gaining possession of the gate key which he carries, or to steal it while he is asleep. As a precaution against either I should be compelled to place guards over you.’
Gregory’s firm chin jutted out aggressively, and he retorted with sudden sharpness, ‘I don’t know what you are trying to hide, and I don’t care. But I have committed no crime and you have no right whatever to hold me as a prisoner. I will give you no undertaking of any kind, and you can do as you damn well please.’
‘I find your attitude both regrettable and unbecoming,’ the doctor remarked. Then he added as he turned away, ‘You will have only yourself to blame for the additional restrictions placed on your liberty.’
The ‘additional restrictions’ arrived an hour later in the form of three stalwart men all dressed similarly and carrying long staves. They wore broad-brimmed straw hats, belts and gaiters of brown leather, their blue blouses were embroidered both back and front with a large complicated Chinese character in red, and it seemed obvious that they were part of the local police force. After depositing in the dormitory the bundles they carried, two of them made themselves comfortable with Chung in his kitchen, while the third went and squatted by the gate. At intervals of two hours they relieved one another of gate guard. Then, as a further precaution against Gregory’s attempting to get away, shortly after sundown all three of them came to his cabin and, having salaamed politely, locked him in. It was little more than a gesture, as the door was a flimsy one and egress through the window prevented only by a permanently fixed wire mosquito screen; but had he forced either he would have had to risk attracting the attention of the guards by the sound of his breaking out.
At the time he was just finishing his evening meal. When he had toyed for a few minutes longer with the highly-spiced contents of the dozen or more little bowls that Chung had brought him, he pushed the tray away and, for the first time since he had arrived in the island, began deliberately to set his wits to work.
In the past there had been occasions when his life, and sometimes more than his life, had depended on his regaining his freedom. Now, there was no more to be gained than the satisfaction of an idle curiosity. But, quite unconsciously and in blissful ignorance of the type of man with whom he was dealing, Ho-Ping had, most ill-advisedly, provoked him with a challenge. Gregory had always been a lone wolf. He did not take kindly to any form of discipline. He had never allowed anyone to dictate to him, and he was much too accustomed to doing what he pleased to start submitting to that sort of thing now.
Presently the door was unlocked by one of the guards for Chung to retrieve the dishes, and Gregory smiled at the elderly Chinaman. Dr. Ping’s fears that he might attack his servant were quite unfounded. He might have stolen the key to the gate while the man was sleeping, but he would never have used brute force on anyone who had cared for him kindly while ill. All the same he realised that having had a watch set on him was going to make it much more difficult to get hold of the key by any means, and now even that would be only half the battle; for, having got it, how would he be able to evade the vigilance of his guards in order to use it unchallenged?
Sleeping on this problem brought no answer to it, and next morning he paced the terrace with considerably more vigour than usual. Taking long strides, his arms hanging loosely and his head thrust slightly forward, he walked quickly up and down while his mind worked with equal swiftness. A dozen embryo plans started to take shape in it but he rejected them all, either because of the difficulty of purloining the key from Chung in daylight, or because at night he was locked in his cubicle and could think of no way of getting out unheard and unseen; or again, because he felt that in view of what he owed to Ho-Ping, decency dictated that he should rule out any plan entailing violence against the doctor’s henchmen. Nevertheless, long before midday he had hit on an idea, and during the heat of the afternoon, while all but one of his guards was sleeping, he made a preliminary investigation which satisfied him that the first stage of his plan was practical.
That night, after he had been locked in, he gave the guard and Chung a couple of hours to settle down. At the end of that time he removed the curtains from his window, tore them into strips, knotted them together to form a rope, and in one end of it wrapped and tied securely a heavy stone that he had brought in from the terrace. He then stood on a chair and set to work on the ceiling. His examination of it during the afternoon had shown him that it was only a flimsy affair of sun-baked mud on a foundation on thin, split bamboo canes strung together with string. Within half an hour he had torn an oval hole in it as wide as his shoulders. Taking his stone-weighted rope in one hand, he scrambled through the hole on to the roof.
Cautiously now he crawled to its front edge and peered over. The starlight was just sufficient for him to make out the line of the fence beyond the kitchen end of the building and the dark splodge of a figure squatting near the gate. As he expected, a watch was being kept by night as well as by day, in case he managed to get out of his cubicle unheard and attempted to pick the lock. But he had no intention of trying. For his purpose all that mattered was that the man was sufficiently far away to be out of ear-shot. It seemed probable that he was dozing; in any case it was unlikely that he would look up to the roof unless his attention was attracted by sounds of movement on it.
Turning away, Gregory crawled to the back of the roof, then stood up beneath the overhanging tree that gave it partial shade from the midday sun. Its lowest branch was about four feet above his head, so well out of his reach. Holding his home-made rope near its weighted end, he whirled the weight round and round then threw it up into the foliage. The cotton-wrapped stone failed to find a lodgement but he deftly caught it as it fell back, and tried again. Like the spider watched by Robert the Bruce, success required patience. Sometimes the stone caught but came away at a sharp tug, more often it just fell back at once; but at last it twisted twice round a medium-sized branch and Gregory was able to pull the branch down until with his left hand he could clutch its nearest twigs. Letting go the rope, he seized another handful, then risked a little jump and grabbed the branch itself. Praying that it would not snap, he jumped again and clung on higher up. As the bough gave under the strain his toes scraped the roof but the branch did not snap and it was now taking most of his weight. With a final heave he got a grip on the main bough, then hand over hand swung himself along it until he passed over the electrified fence; but he gave it only a glance as he sought for further good holds, and cautiously lowered himself to the cleft in the rocks from which the tree was growing.
That afternoon he had spent some time memorising the face of the fifty-foot cliff at the back of his prison. It was fairly steep but frequently broken by cracks and ledges on which grew scrub, and in some cases smaller trees of the same kind as the one down which he had just clambered. After a brief rest he set out up the route he had planned to take, and found it comparatively easy going. Ten minutes later he was standing on the top of the cliff, a free man again.
Sadly he realised that his freedom did not really mean much to him. Perhaps that was partly because his escape had been so easy, and partly because, unlike his escapes in the past, there had been no threat of death to spur him to it. In fact he had every intention of returning to his prison before dawn by the way he had left it. He would not even have bothered to outwit Ho-Ping, but for his resentment at being arbitrarily confined, and a vague temptation to derive cynical amusement from the doctor’s face next day, when he learned that during a midnight prowl his prisoner had discovered the secret of the island.
That he would discover it, Gregory felt confident; as, if a cage was necessary to prevent ordinary castaways stumbling upon it during the course of a casual walk, it must obviously be something very easy to find out. But at that moment he might well have turned back, had he had any idea of the chain of strange and murderous events in which the knowledge of that secret was going to lead him.