f whisky by
the mailman next week. Again Denison was touched by his brother's
thoughtfulness, and decided to remain for another week at least. But
at night-time he thought a good deal about the dear old _Palestine_ and
Harvey Packenham, her skipper.

While awaiting with considerable anxiety the arrival of the mailman,
Denison passed the time in killing tiger-snakes, cremating the dead
cattle around the place, bathing in the only pool in the river safe from
alligators, and meditating upon the advantages of a berth ashore. But
when the mailman arrived (four days late) with only five bottles of
whisky, and said in a small, husky voice that the pack-horse had fallen
and broken seven bottles, he felt a soured and disappointed man, and
knew that he was only fit for the sea. The mailman, to whom he expressed
these sentiments, told him to cheer up. It was loneliness, he said, that
made him feel like that, and he for _his_ part 'didn't like to see no
man feelin' lonely in the bloomin' bush.' Therefore he would keep him
company for a few days, and let the sanguinary mail go to Hades.

He did keep him company. And then, when the whisky was finished, he bade
Denison good-bye, and said that any man who would send 'his own bloomin'
brother to perish in such a place was not fit to live himself, and ought
to be flamin' well shown up in the bloomin' noospapers.' At daybreak
next morning Denison told the coloured ladies and gentlemen to eat the
remaining poultry; and, shouldering his swag, tramped it into Cooktown
to 'look for a ship.'

ADDIE RANSOM: A MEMORY OF THE TOKELAUS

A hot, steamy mist rose from the gleaming, oily sea, and the little
island lay sweltering and gasping under a sky of brass and a savagely
blazing sun. Along the edges of the curving lines of yellow beach
the drought-smitten plumes of the fast-withering coco-palms drooped
straight, brown and motionless; and Wallis, the trader at Avamua
village, as he paced to and fro upon the heated boards of his verandah,
cursed the island and the people, and the deadly calm, and the brassy
sky, and the firm of Tom de Wolf & Sons (whom he blamed for the
weather), and the drought, and the sickness, and the overdue ship, and
himself, and everything else; and he wished that Lita would go away for
a month--her patience and calmness worried and irritated him. Then
he might perhaps try getting drunk on Sundays like Ransom; to-day was
Sunday, and another Sunday meant another hell