of turtle shell, huge
plugs of wood, rusty wire nails, and empty rifle cartridges. The calibre
of a Winchester rifle was the smallest hole an ear bore; some of the
largest holes were inches in diameter, and any single ear averaged from
three to half a dozen holes. Spikes and bodkins of polished bone or
petrified shell were thrust through their noses. On the chest of one
hung a white doorknob, on the chest of another the handle of a china
cup, on the chest of a third the brass cogwheel of an alarm clock. They
chattered in queer, falsetto voices, and, combined, did no more work
than a single white sailor.

Aft, under an awning, were two white men. Each was clad in a six-penny
undershirt and wrapped about the loins with a strip of cloth. Belted
about the middle of each was a revolver and tobacco pouch. The sweat
stood out on their skin in myriads of globules. Here and there the
globules coalesced in tiny streams that dripped to the heated deck and
almost immediately evaporated. The lean, dark-eyed man wiped his fingers
wet with a stinging stream from his forehead and flung it from him with
a weary curse. Wearily, and without hope, he gazed seaward across the
outer-reef, and at the tops of the palms along the beach.

"Eight o'clock, an' hell don't get hot till noon," he complained. "Wisht
to God for a breeze. Ain't we never goin' to get away?"

The other man, a slender German of five and twenty, with the massive
forehead of a scholar and the tumble-home chin of a degenerate, did not
trouble to reply. He was busy emptying powdered quinine into a cigarette
paper. Rolling what was approximately fifty grains of the drug into a
tight wad, he tossed it into his mouth and gulped it down without the
aid of water.

"Wisht I had some whiskey," the first man panted, after a fifteen-minute
interval of silence.

Another equal period elapsed ere the German enounced, relevant of
nothing:

"I'm rotten with fever. I'm going to quit you, Griffiths, when we get to
Sydney. No more tropics for me. I ought to known better when I signed on
with you."

"You ain't been much of a mate," Griffiths replied, too hot himself to
speak heatedly. "When the beach at Guvutu heard I'd shipped you, they
all laughed. 'What? Jacobsen?' they said. 'You can't hide a square
face of trade gin or sulphuric acid that he won't smell out!' You've
certainly lived up to your reputation. I ain't had a drink for a
fortnight, what of your snoopin' my supply."

"I