er ruined cities there may be, are a good fifty miles in
the bush."

"'S all you know about it. I can see handsome majestic ruin over there
on the beach, an' I'm going to see it 'out further delay. 'S a duty I
owe to myself to enlarge the mind by studying the great monuments of
the past."

"If you go ashore, you'll be marooned as safe as houses, and Lord knows
when the next steamer will call. The place reeks of fever, and as your
present state of health is distinctly rocky, you'll catch it, and be
dead and out of the way inside a week easily. Look here, don't be
an ass."

"Look here yourself. Are you a competent medicated practitioner?"

"Oh, go and get sober."

"Answer me. Are you competent medicated practitioner?"

"No, I'm not."

"Very well then. Don't you presume t'lecture me on state of my health.
No reply, please. I don' wan' to be encumbered with your further
acquaintance. I wish you a go' morning."

Hamilton looked at Captain Kettle under his brows. "Will you advise me,"
he said, "what I ought to do."

"I should say it would be healthier for you to let him have his own
way."

"Thanks," said Hamilton, and turned away. "I'll act on that advice."

Now the next few movements of Mr. Cranze are wrapped in a certain degree
of mystery. He worried a very busy third mate, and got tripped on the
hard deck for his pains; he was ejected forcibly from the engineers'
mess-room, where it was supposed he had designs on the whisky; and he
was rescued by the carpenter from an irate half-breed Mosquito Indian,
who seemed to have reasons for desiring his blood there and then on the
spot. But how else he passed the time, and as to how he got over the
side and into the water, there is no evidence to show.

There were theories that he had been put there by violence as a just act
of retribution; there was an idea that he was trying to get into a
lighter which lay alongside for a cast ashore, but saw two lighters, and
got into the one which didn't exist; and there were other theories also,
but they were mostly frivolous. But the very undoubted fact remained
that he was there in the water, that there was an ugly sea running, that
he couldn't swim, and that the place bristled with sharks.

A couple of lifebuoys, one after the other, hit him accurately on the
head, and the lighter cast off, and backed down to try and pick him up.
He did not bring his head on to the surface again, but stuck up an
occasional hand, and grasped