other people were, and
that was the reason of his visiting the ship.

He was the doctor of our Legation and, of course, of the Consulate,
too. He looked after the ship's health, which generally was poor, and
trembling, as it were, on the verge of a break-up. Yes. The men ailed.
And thus time was not only money, but life as well.

I had never seen such a steady ship's company. As the doctor remarked to
me: "You seem to have a most respectable lot of seamen." Not only were
they consistently sober, but they did not even want to go ashore. Care
was taken to expose them as little as possible to the sun. They
were employed on light work under the awnings. And the humane doctor
commended me.

"Your arrangements appear to me to be very judicious, my dear Captain."

It is difficult to express how much that pronouncement comforted me.
The doctor's round, full face framed in a light-coloured whisker was the
perfection of a dignified amenity. He was the only human being in
the world who seemed to take the slightest interest in me. He would
generally sit in the cabin for half an hour or so at every visit.

I said to him one day:

"I suppose the only thing now is to take care of them as you are doing
till I can get the ship to sea?"

He inclined his head, shutting his eyes under the large spectacles, and
murmured:

"The sea . . . undoubtedly."

The first member of the crew fairly knocked over was the steward--the
first man to whom I had spoken on board. He was taken ashore (with
choleric symptoms) and died there at the end of a week. Then, while I
was still under the startling impression of this first home-thrust of
the climate, Mr. Burns gave up and went to bed in a raging fever without
saying a word to anybody.

I believe he had partly fretted himself into that illness; the climate
did the rest with the swiftness of an invisible monster ambushed in
the air, in the water, in the mud of the river-bank. Mr. Burns was a
predestined victim.

I discovered him lying on his back, glaring sullenly and radiating heat
on one like a small furnace. He would hardly answer my questions, and
only grumbled. Couldn't a man take an afternoon off duty with a bad
headache--for once?

That evening, as I sat in the saloon after dinner, I could hear him
muttering continuously in his room. Ransome, who was clearing the table,
said to me:

"I am afraid, sir, I won't be able to give the mate all the attention
he's likely to need. I will ha