his progress from shack to shack, saw how the picturesque
little savages grouped about him. They knew him and listened to him
confidently, so that the parboiled doctor was as much disgusted as
pleased with the ease with which Terry secured the cooperation for
which he had begged and stormed in vain.

Under his direction they cut down all of the plant life whose upturned
leaves or fronds held stagnant, mosquito-breeding water, climbed tall
palms to brush out the rain water accumulated in the concave
depressions where frond joins trunk, even twisted off the cuplike
scarlet blossoms from hibiscus shrubs. They carried green brush to a
series of smudges he lit to cordon the village against the vicious
singing horde of germ carriers. Best of all, they ceased their
incantations over the sick, unwound the tight cords they had knotted
around the abdomens of the stricken to prevent the fever from "going
further down," opened the grass windows that gasping lungs might
obtain decent air, and swallowed the doctor's hitherto neglected
medicines.

There were no chickens in the village, no eggs. The doctor bemoaned
the lack of nourishment for his sick. So Terry summoned four of the
ablest hunters and disappeared into the woods for an hour, returning
with a young buck speared through the lungs and shot mercifully
through the head. In an hour a big pot was boiling in the middle of
the street that throughout the night the sufferers might receive hot
soup made up of venison, yams, eggplant and rice, all that the village
afforded.

Doctor Merchant, watching the transformation, marveled at the method
of persuasion. There was no attempt at exercise of authority, no
raising of voice, no gestures, only patient explanation, an assumption
of mutual friendliness, a sincere and ample sympathy.

Shortly after sundown the doctor, exhausted with the worry and stress
of the hours before Terry came, distributed his bulk as comfortably as
possible on the bamboo floor, tucked in his mosquito net very
carefully, and fell into a heavy sleep, too exhausted to await Terry's
return.

It was as well that the doctor did not await him, for Terry spent half
of the night by a fire kindled at the base of a big tree in front of
the chief's abode. Seated on a stump near the blaze, surrounded by a
ring of half-nude Bogobos whose timid eyes seldom wandered from his
face, he answered their questions and erased the last vestiges of the
panic into which the epidemi