g all over. Meanwhile he
considered the wickedness of these Bugis that had been carrying on
serial murder here all unbeknownst and how nearly they had added him to
the score by playing him for a scientist and a sucker. And he considered
too that he was now shut off from all help in the matter of the lights
and what a responsibility of life and property rested on him to keep
them going.

"When I thought of that," he said, telling me, "--when I thought of that
I jumped up and fired into the trees till the gun was too hot to hold.
Curse 'em! D'you know I had to take what was left of my pants
to patch up the wicks that night?"

He would have given all the honorary letters of the alphabet for the use
of a rifle, but he might have saved his rage, for the Bugis minded bird
shot not at all. They only danced in the mangroves and mocked him.
"Ya--ya!" they said, which meant they'd get him yet....

He began to think so himself the next day when his water ran out. The
tender was due in three more days. He thought his wicks might last that
long, with nursing. But he would be dead a dozen times over with thirst.

After a blazing torture along toward evening he couldn't stand it any
more. The woods were quiet and there was just a chance that the enemy
were napping. He took a pail and sneaked ashore over his bridge to the
water barrel under the mangroves that they had always kept filled for
him. It seemed they must have forgot to cut off supplies--the barrel was
brimming. He drunk a pailful on the spot and started back with
another,--and he got as far as his shack before he collapsed, all curled
up in knots quite picturesque. Those simple Bugis had dosed the water
with a native drug made from the klang berry.

Now, it is a singular thing about klang, as Andrew Harben told me, that
it will mostly kill a brown man and seldom a white, but if it does not
it sends him crazy. By that he meant crazy in the Malay way, which is
quite different. The klang did not kill Andrew Harben. It laid him cold
at first, and for many hours he lay without sense or speech.

* * * * *

When he came to be was stretched in a corner of the shack. The cupola
overhead was dark and the shack was dark except for one tiny dish lamp
on the floor, and around and about squatted the tribe of Allo having a
high old time.

They were naked, being hopeful of a chance to swim before the night was
done, and they smelt like swine. A big wi