ptain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-lustre eyes.

"I--I thought--" Bertie was beginning.

"Shots? Did you hear any shots, Mr. Jacobs?"

"Not a shot," replied Mr. Jacobs.

The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said:

"Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish
dinner."

Bertie slept that night in the captain's cabin, a tiny stateroom off
the main-cabin. The for'ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of
rifles. Over the bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a
big drawer, which when he pulled it out, he found filled with
ammunition dynamite, and several boxes of detonators. He elected to
take the settee on the opposite side. Lying conspicuously on the small
table, was the _Arla's_ log. Bertie did not know that it had been
especially prepared for the occasion by Captain Malu, and he read
therein how on September 21, two boat's crew had fallen overboard and
been drowned. Bertie read between the lines and knew better. He read
how the _Arla's_ whale-boat had been bushwacked at Sulu and had lost
three men; of how the skipper discovered the cook stewing human flesh
on the galley fire--flesh purchased by the boat's crew ashore in Fui;
of how an accidental discharge of dynamite, while signalling, had
killed another boat's crew; of night attacks; ports fled from between
the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by fleets of
salt-water men in the larger passages. One item that occurred with
monotonous frequency was death by dysentery. He noticed with alarm
that two white men had so died--guests, like himself on the _Arla_.

"I say, you know," Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. "I've been
glancing through your log."

The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lying
about.

"And all that dysentery, you know, that's all rot, just like the
accidental drownings," Bertie continued. "What does dysentery really
stand for?"

The skipper openly admired his guest's acumen, stiffened himself to
make indignant denial, then gracefully surrendered.

"You see, it's like this, Mr. Arkwright. These islands have got a bad
enough name as it is. It's getting harder every day to sign on white
men. Suppose a man is killed. The company has to pay through the nose
for another man to take the job. But if the man merely dies of
sickness, it's all right. The new chums don't mind disease. What they
draw the line at is being murdere