re clearly. "Billy, old man, it was that water we drank, and the
natives have been pysoning it to kill the fishes, and killed us
instead."

"Eh! What!"

"Native savages been trying to pyson the fishes, and pysoned us instead,
matey. I said it afore, Billy Wriggs--I says it again, and I'll go on
saying on it for a week if that'll do you any good."

"I'm all right, matey. I'm all right, Tommy. But what do the native
savages want to pyson the fishes for? Never did the savages any harm."

"Billy Wriggs, you'd better get a noo head, mate, and send this one to
be cleaned."

"Ay! You're right, mate, for this here one won't go at all. Feels as
if some'un had been sifting sea-sand into the works. But what had the
fishes done?"

"Nothing. Pyson 'em to float atop, and ketch 'em to eat. Now come and
help sooperior officers as have tumbled down all of a heap."

As he spoke, Smith rose from the ground to which he had fallen, and
reeled toward Panton and Drew, slowly, and as if he could only see them
dimly at a distance, while Wriggs followed his example, and came on in a
zigzag, idiotic way.

Suddenly Smith stood up erect, and uttered a hoarse cry, as he stared
wildly at his companions.

"Here!" he yelled. "Help! I know now. Mr Lane. He went in there
with us, and he aren't been out. Come on!"

His strength and honest manly feeling had come back with the flash of
light which had illumined his brain, and rushing straight for the mist,
they saw him begin to grow bigger as if looked at through a magnifying
glass, increasing in size till he was monstrous, indistinct and blurred,
and then completely disappear.

The man's cry and subsequent action roused them, and all staggered after
him with their power of thinking clearly returning, and with it a
feeling of horror as they grasped the fact that two of their party were
now lost in the strange belt of vapour, whose fumes had so strangely
overcome them.

"We must help them," cried Panton wildly. "Come on: follow me."

He started for the mist before them, but before he could reach it, Smith
staggered and reeled out, striking against him, and then catching his
breath as if he had been held under water, or as a man rises to the
surface after being nearly drowned.

"Stop!" he panted, with his eyes seeming to start out of his head. "You
can't go. A man can't breathe in there. I'll try again, d'reckly,
gentlemen, but--but! oh, the poor, brave, handsome lad! I-