our
hand. Their exaggeration of size was a delirium due to poisoning."

"And the big, black ogre?"

"Was our friend Mark, here," explained the doctor, "who rescued you,
first, and has saved your life by working over you, here."

Stuart held out his hand, feebly.

"I didn't know there were any trees which hurt you unless you touched
them," he said.

"Plenty of them," answered the scientist. "There are over a hundred
plants which give off smells or vapors which are injurious either to man
or animals. Some are used by savages for arrow poisons, others for fish
poisons, and some we use for medicinal drugs. Dixon records a 'gas-tree'
in Africa, the essential oil of which contains chlorine and the smell of
which is like the poison-gas used in the World War. And poison-ivy, in
the United States, will poison some people even if they only pass close
to it."

"Jes' how does a tree make a smell, Mister Ol' Doc?" queried Mark.

"That's hard to explain to you," answered the scientist, turning to the
negro. "But every plant has some kind of a smell, that is, all of them
have essential oils which volatilize in the air. Some, like the bay,
have these oil-sacs in the leaves, some, like cinnamon, in the bark, and
so on. The smell of flowers comes the same way."

"An' there is mo' kinds of debbil-trees 'an them on Terror Cove?"

"Plenty more kinds," was the answer, "though few of them are as deadly.
These are famous. Lord Nelson, when a young man here in Barbados, was
made very ill by drinking from a pool into which some branches of the
manchineel had been thrown. In fact, he never really got over it."

"How about me, Doctor?" enquired Stuart. His face was flushing and its
was evident that the semi-paralysis of the first infection was passing
into a fever stage.

"It all depends whether you ate any of the fruit or not," the doctor
answered. "If you didn't, you're safe. But you seem to have spent an
hour in that poison-tree grove, and that gives the 'devil-trees,' as
Mark calls them, plenty of time to get in their deadly work. You'll come
out of it, all right, but you'll have to fight for it!"

CHAPTER IX

THE HURRICANE

For many days Stuart lay in an alternation of fever and stupor,
tormented by dreams in which visions of the red land-crabs played a
terrible part, but youth and clean living were on his side, and he
passed the crisis. Thereafter, in the equable climate of Barbados--one
of the most healthful of the