form of a rainbow.

"What is this man called?" said the little doctor.

"It's a dark man wearing a red cap, called Pal Yachy," said Rainbow
Pete. "He spends his time escaping me. Look, where he shot me in the
hip."

Now we shielded him, and he drew out his shirt showing the wound in the
thigh which made a rainbow of him; but stop, didn't McGregor discover
the strange business on his spine?

"What's this, however?" he said.

"This is a palm-tree," said the man. "Stand close about me."

Oh my, we stood close, watching the man twisting up his shirt, and here
we saw the palm-tree going up his spine, and every joint of his spine
was used for a joint of the tree, like; and the long blue leaves were
waving on his shoulder-blade when he would be rippling the skin. This
was a fine broad back like satin to be putting a palm-tree on. Look, as
I am lifting my head, here I see the dark woman silent at the bar,
burning up with curiosity at what we are hiding here. Listen, it's the
man's voice, under his shirt.

"This was done in the South Seas, when I was young," he said to us, "and
the bigger I grow, the bigger the tree is. And now what next?" Then he
put his shirt back, and stood up to be fixing an eye on the woman from
Regina.

He was first to be waited on at Scarecrow Charlie's. Yes, he was first.
This was a mystery of a man to that dark woman from Regina.

Now in these days before blasting began, they were fond of talking
marriage on Mushrat, thinking of this woman from Regina, who was at the
disposal of no man there. They were full of doubts and wonderments, when
they would be idling together in Scarecrow Charlie's. But now one
morning when they were idling there, Shoepack Sam must be yawning and
saying to them,

"Oh, my, this is the time now, before the sun is up, I'm glad I am not
married. It's a pleasure to be a single man at this hour."

Heh! Heh! As a usual thing we are not gratified at all for this favor of
heaven. A single man, Shoepack Sam was saying, would not have to be
looking at the wreck of his wife in the morning; and this is when women
were caught unawares in the gill-nets time is lowering for them.

"They are pale about the gills then," he said. "They are just drowned
fish. They have stayed in the nets too long."

"No, it's not certain," said Rainbow Pete. "She might be
pleasant-looking on the pillow with her hair adrift."

Then Shoepack told him that the salt water had leaked into his brains,