So Kep promised to meet this officer next day, meanwhile going as far with him as the British Consulate, for everything bordering on suspicion must be avoided. The Arabs even then might be watching.
Kep then returned to his home, and thinking that something terrible had happened, for it was now long past eleven, the Arab had sat up for him with little Zeena, who was on the ottoman weeping when the lad entered.
He had to tell all his story now with the girl on his knee.
"From what I heard him say that night in the jungle," returned Kep, "he is not one devil, but a thousand devils rolled into one."
The _Marten_ was busy coaling next forenoon, but men were allowed on shore after twelve o'clock, and when the liberty boat returned at six o'clock from the shore two of them were missing. Very early next morning a party of marines, under the charge of a sergeant, landed to hunt these men up.
They found them at last, or rather they found their dead bodies. The poor fellows had been inveigled into a compound, some little way off one of the main streets, and then stabbed to the heart, and their faces frightfully gashed and mutilated. They had not been robbed. Both men possessed watches and had money also, but nothing had been abstracted. It was a cases of revenge pure and simple. Not that the Arab perpetrators had borne any personal grudge against these men. They were Britishers, that was all.
Next day, with others, Kep went to the spot where the men were murdered. Bungle was there also, but they pretended not to know each other.
Kep noticed that this clever little fellow picked up something with his toes, and slipped it into his hand, and that same evening he came as before to our young hero's quarters and showed him the something.
It was a beautiful large ring, set with sparkling stones, and evidently of great value.
"Good gracious!" he cried, "that very ring I saw on the chief's finger as he squatted by the forest fire."
The _Marten_ started next morning. The despatches would not wait, but the officer left letters at the Consulate for the _Breezy_, which was now overdue, and left orders also with the Consul to investigate the murder and punish, if possible, the perpetrators of this terrible crime.