s behind. Do they look very ill?"

"Middling bad, sir." Ransome's eyes gazed steadily into mine. We
exchanged smiles. Ransome's a little wistful, as usual, mine no doubt
grim enough, to correspond with my secret exasperation.

I asked:

"Was there any wind at all this morning?"

"Can hardly say that, sir. We've moved all the time though. The land
ahead seems a little nearer."

That was it. A little nearer. Whereas if we had only had a little more
wind, only a very little more, we might, we should, have been abreast
of Liant by this time and increasing our distance from that contaminated
shore. And it was not only the distance. It seemed to me that a stronger
breeze would have blown away the contamination which clung to the ship.
It obviously did cling to the ship. Two men. One burning, one shivering.
I felt a distinct reluctance to go and look at them. What was the good?
Poison is poison. Tropical fever is tropical fever. But that it
should have stretched its claw after us over the sea seemed to me an
extraordinary and unfair license. I could hardly believe that it could
be anything worse than the last desperate pluck of the evil from which
we were escaping into the clean breath of the sea. If only that breath
had been a little stronger. However, there was the quinine against the
fever. I went into the spare cabin where the medicine chest was kept to
prepare two doses. I opened it full of faith as a man opens a miraculous
shrine. The upper part was inhabited by a collection of bottles, all
square-shouldered and as like each other as peas. Under that orderly
array there were two drawers, stuffed as full of things as one could
imagine--paper packages, bandages, cardboard boxes officially labelled.
The lower of the two, in one of its compartments, contained our
provision of quinine.

There were five bottles, all round and all of a size. One was about
a third full. The other four remained still wrapped up in paper and
sealed. But I did not expect to see an envelope lying on top of them. A
square envelope, belonging, in fact, to the ship's stationery.

It lay so that I could see it was not closed down, and on picking it
up and turning it over I perceived that it was addressed to myself. It
contained a half-sheet of notepaper, which I unfolded with a queer sense
of dealing with the uncanny, but without any excitement as people meet
and do extraordinary things in a dream.

"My dear Captain," it began, but I ran to the