e you, single-handed, but with all a man's
pluck, and even unarmed, to make yourself master of my little craft. It
was rather a big venture to make, my lad; don't you think it was?"

"No, sir," said the lad firmly. "I had something else behind me."

"What, the belief that my lads only wanted a leader to turn against me?"

"No, sir; that I was backed up, as an officer of the Queen, by the whole
power of the law."

"Oh, I see," said the skipper. "Yes. Exactly. That's all very big and
grand, and it might act sometimes and in some places, and especially
when there are men well-armed to back it up as well; but if you had
thought it out, my lad, I think you would have seen that it could have
had no chance here.--Oh, that my dose, Poole? Half or full?" he
continued, as he raised his hand to take a little silver mug which his
son had brought.

"Only half, father," replied the lad. "You had a full dose just before
you went to sleep."

"To be sure; so I did," said the skipper, whose hand was trembling as he
took the cup.--"It's of no use to ask you to drink with me, Mr
Burnett?"

Fitz shook his head.

"No, I suppose not," continued the skipper; "but we are going to be good
friends, all the same."

Fitz watched the sick man as he drained the cup.

"Ah! Bitter stuff! If you just think of the bitterest thing you ever
tasted and multiply it by itself, square it, as we used to call it at
school, you would only come near to the taste of this. But it's not a
nasty bitter, sickly and nauseous and all that, but a bitter that you
can get almost to like in time.--Thank you, Poole," and he handed back
the cup. "It makes me feel better at once. Nasty things, these fevers,
Squire Burnett, and very wonderful too that a man, a strong man, should
be going about hale and hearty in these hot countries, and then breathe
in something all at once that turns him up like this. And then more
wonderful still that the savage people lower down yonder in South
America--higher up, I ought to say, for it was the folk amongst the
mountains--should have found out a shrub whose bark would kill the fever
poison and make a man himself again. They say--put the cup away,
Poole--that wherever a poisonous thing grows there's another plant grows
close at hand which will cure the ill it does, bane and antidote, my
lad, stinging-nettles and dock at home, you know. I don't know that it
holds quite true, but I do know that there are fevers out her