s he was very, very sick, and he learned how a
small boat in any kind of a sea can move forty-seven different ways
within one and the same minute. This is no trifling bit of knowledge, as
those who have acquired it can tell. It was nearly fatal to Pellett.

On the third day he awoke with a mouth and a stomach of fumed leather
and a great weakness, but otherwise in command of his few faculties. The
gale had fallen and Karaki was quietly preparing fresh coconuts. Pellett
quaffed two before he thought to miss the brandy with which his
breakfast draft was always laced. But when he remembered the milk choked
in his throat.

"Me like'm rum."

"No got'm rum."

Pellett looked forward and aft, to windward and to lee. There was a
great deal of horizon in sight, but nothing else. For the first time he
was aware of a strangeness in events.

"What name you come so far?" he asked.

"We catch'm one big fella wind," explained Karaki.

Pellett was in no condition to question his statement nor to observe
from the careful stocking of the proa that they had not been blown to
sea on a casual fishing trip. Pellett had other things to think of. Some
of the things were pink and others purple and others were striped like
the rainbow in most surprising designs, and all were highly novel and
interesting. They came thronging out of the vasty deep to entertain
Christopher Alexander Pellett. Which they did.

You cannot cut off alcohol from a man who has been continuously pickled
for two years without results more or less picturesque. These were days
when the proa went shouting across the empty southern seas to madrigal
and choric song. Tied hand and foot and lashed under a thwart, Pellett
raved in the numbers of his innocent youth. It would have been singular
hearing had there been any to hear, but there was only Karaki, who did
not care for the lesser Cavalier poets and on whom whole pages of
"Atalanta in Calydon" were quite wasted. Now and then he threw a
dipper-ful of sea water over the white man, or spread a mat to keep the
sun from him, or fed him coconut milk by force. Karaki was a poor
audience, but an excellent nurse. Also, he combed Pellett's whiskers
twice every day.

They ran into calms. But the trade picked them up again more gently, so
that Karaki ventured to make westing, and they fled under skies as
bright as polished brass.

_My heart is within me
As an ash in the fire;
Whosoever hath seen me
Without lute,