his huge but
handsome mouth, the display of magnificent teeth, the disappearance of
both eyes, and a prolonged quiet chuckle.

"Why, what's the matter with you, Jack?" asked Stevenson.

"Nothin's the matter wi' me, old man--'cept--"

Here he indulged in another chuckle.

"Goin' mad, with over-fatigue," said Simkin, looking suspiciously at
him.

"Ay, that's it, messmate, clean mad wi' over-fatigue."

He wiped his eyes with the hairy back of his hand, for the chuckling,
being hearty, had produced a few tears.

"No, but really, Jack, what is it you're laughing at?" asked Armstrong.
"If there _is_ a joke you might as well let us have the benefit of
laughing along wi' you, for we stand much in need of something to cheer
us here."

"Well, Billy boy, I may as well make a clean breast of it," said Molloy,
raising himself on one elbow and becoming grave. "I do confess to
feelin' raither ashamed o' myself, but you mustn't be hard on me, lads,
for circumstances alters cases, you know, as Solomon said--leastwise if
it warn't him it was Job or somebody else. The fact is, I've bin
shammin', mates!"

"Shamming!"

"Ay, shammin' _weak_. Purtendin' that I was shaky on the legs, an' so
not quite up to the cargo they were puttin' aboard o' me."

"If what you've been doing means shamming _weak_, I'd like to see you
coming out _strong_," observed Miles, with a short laugh.

"Well, p'r'aps you'll see that too some day," returned the sailor, with
an amiable look.

"But do you really mean that all that groaning--which I confess to have
been surprised at--was mere pretence?"

"All sham. Downright sneakin'!" said Molloy. "The short an' the long
of it is, that I see'd from the first the on'y way to humbug them
yellow-faced baboons was to circumwent 'em. So I set to work at the
wery beginnin'."

"Ah, by takin' a header," said Simkin, "into one o' their
bread-baskets!"

"No, no!" returned the seaman, "that, I confess, was a mistake. But
you'll admit, I've made no more mistakes o' the same sort since then.
You see, I perceived that, as my strength is considerable above the
average, the baboons would be likely to overload me, so, arter profound
excogitation wi' myself, I made up my mind what to do, an' when they had
clapped on a little more than the rest o' you carried I began to groan,
then I began to shake a bit in my timbers, an' look as if I was agoin'
to founder. It didn't check 'em much, for they're awful cruel, so