the lonely spirit of Jimmy Cruise was
trying to reach its mate,--aye, striving to drag her body down to the
bottom of the sea to lie beside his own.

As the days went by,--long days that were not governed by any daylight
saving law,--the settlement took on the air and life of a sequestered
village. There was the general warehouse from which stores were
dispensed sparingly by agents selected for such duties. Women and
men went to market and carried home the provender. A fish market was
established; wood-yards, fruit and vegetable booths, a dispensary, and
a general store where leather, cloths of various description, and furs
were to be had by requisition.

In speaking of the dispensary, Dr. Cullen complacently announced that
the supply of medicine was limited, but that it was nothing to worry
about. He declared bluntly,--and with a twinkle in his eye,--that people
took too much medicine anyhow.

"Medicine is a luxury," he said. "The more we stuff into people the more
they want, and the less they take the sooner they forget they're sick.
As your doctor, from this time on, I shall be delighted to set your
broken bones, sew up your gashes, and all that sort of thing, but it is
precious little medicine I'll give to you. So don't get sick. The only
epidemic we can have here, according to my judgment, is an epidemic of
good health. Am I right, gentlemen?"

The two young American doctors put aside their dignity and grinned.

The wines and liquors from the Doraine were brought ashore and locked
away in the cellar beneath the warehouse. It could be had only on the
doctor's orders.

"It won't hurt any of us to drink nothing but water for awhile," said
Percival in discussing the matter; "and the chances are we'll be less
likely to hurt each other if we let the grog alone. There'll be no
drinking on this island if I can help it. I understand some of you
men are planning to put the pulp of the algarobo through a process of
fermentation and make chica by the barrel. Well, if I have anything to
say about it, you'll do nothing of the sort. I know that stuff. It's got
more murder in it than anything I've ever tackled. We can make flour out
of that pulp, as some of you know, and that's all we are going to make
out of it. Besides, we can be decent longer on flour than we can on
chica.

"We'll find it harder to do without tobacco than without booze, and
unless we discover something to take its place we'll be smokeless in
a few week