Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/267

Rh head that had vanished among some bushes a dozen yards away. There was no response, and after calling again Keith twice discharged his revolver into the bushes before going further up the path.

There was no sign of life near as they crossed the compound, but it needed no second glance to see that the blacks had played havoc with the contents of the building. Chairs, boxes and clothes were strewn over the veranda, and a great deal of the furniture had been smashed with that abandon of which only savages can be capable.

Joan touched a broken candle stick with her foot. It was one which had stood on Keith's bureau. A bit of candle out of it lay near. She picked it up dumbly and handed it to the man at her side. Slowly then she walked up the steps and entered the house, stepping over the debris. It was heartbreaking from a woman's point of view to see the place that she had called home for four years reduced to such wreckage.

"It may have been foolish, but somehow—somehow I half expected to find Chester here," Joan said sadly.

Making a megaphone of his hands, Keith shouted at the top of his lungs from the veranda for the girl's brother, but no response came.

"See if you can muster some of the blacks with the gong," Joan suggested.

Keith was about to do so, and had the gong stick