ricultural School at Buitenzorg,
"yes, I zink maybe you will. So you are a natural 'istory? In zat case a
crocodile may not like your flavior, you zink? Perhaps you are right. I
will stop back in a month to see if zis iss z' truth?"

"How many men have held this job?" asked Andrew Harben.

"Oh, I 'ave forgot 'ow many," said the skipper, with a face like wood,
which is the custom of half-castes when they lie.

* * * * *

Andrew Harben might have lived ashore if he'd wanted, because there was
a plank walk set on steel screw piles that led from the lighthouse right
into the mangroves. But he preferred the idea of sitting out there in
the evenings to watch the monkeys and the crabs play along the mud flats
by the river mouth. This shack was his box seat.

He was so took up with getting settled in the new roost that he never
thought to overhaul his supplies till the skipper was gone. Grub and
oil were all right, he found, but one thing was all wrong. Those eight
wicks that fed the lights had been used up short. Even when he filled
the tub level he hadn't more than an inch to spare all around. And there
wasn't an extra wick in the place.

Andrew Harben ran out and yelled at the tender that was just heading up
for Mangkalihat, but he couldn't make them hear, and the skipper thought
he was only passing compliments.

So he was, in a way, being sore. This thing about the wicks was just
blamed carelessness on the part of the three Dutch marines who had held
the place temporary to his arrival. Also it was likely to prove
expensive to shipping and a lot of trouble to him. "How the devil can I
keep those footy little lights going for a month without no wicks?" said
Andrew Harben.

The more he looked and thought the less he liked it. Macassar is a
regular crossroads. Junks from Kwangchow toddle by after sandalwood and
birds' nests, and country wallahs go smelling their way--and smelling is
right--around to Banjermasin after benzoin and rice, and tramps of all
breeds with Australian coal and ironwood, and topsail schooners with
anything at all from pepper to dead Chinamen--a parade like Collins
Street of an afternoon.

* * * * *

Andrew Harben considered, and he saw what a mess he would start
thereabout if he ever let his lights go out. It made him peevish,
because he hadn't come to be bothered with such matters, and he started
to piece out those wicks. All he co