up at the tree's foot; but the third was in a
natural attitude and I do believe that he was dead. For a long time we
stood there watching them--for he whose eyes were to be seen uttered
every now and then a dismal cry in his sleep, and the second began to
talk like a man in a delirium. Spanish he spoke, and that is a tongue I
do not understand. But the words told of agony if ever words did, and I
turned away from the scene at last as a man who couldn't bear to hear
them.

"They're sleeping," said I, "and little good to wake them, if Miss Ruth
speaks true. Come on, lads--the shore's our road and short's the time
to get there."

Peter Bligh reeled dizzily in his walk and began to talk
incoherently--a thing I had never heard him do before in all his life.

"They're sleeping, aye, and what's the waking to be? Is it the madhouse
or the ground? She spoke of the madhouse, and who'll deny, with reason?
There was air for a man in the heights and no parlour plants. I walked
forty miles to Cardiff Fair and didn't dance like this. Take bread when
you've no meat, and, by thunder, I'll fill your glasses."

Well, he gabbled on so, and not one of us gave him a hearing. I had my
arm linked in Dolly Venn's, for he was weak and hysterical, and I
feared he'd go under. Seth Barker, a strong man always, crashed through
the underwood like an elephant stampeding. The woods, I said, could
show us no more awesome sight than we had happed upon in the hollow;
but there I was wrong, for we hadn't tracked a quarter of a mile when
we stumbled suddenly upon the gardens of the bungalow, and there, lying
all together, were five young girls I judged to be natives, for they
had the shape of Pacific Islanders, and, seen in that strange light,
were as handsome and taking as European women. Asleep they were, you
couldn't doubt it; but, unlike the white men, they lay so still that
they might have been dead, while nothing but their smiling faces told
of life and breathing. They, at least, did not appear to suffer, and
that was something for our consolation.

"Look yonder, Dolly lad, and 'tell me what you see," said I, though,
truth to tell, every word spoken was like a knife through my chest;
"three young women sleeping as though they were in their own beds.
Isn't that a sight to keep a man up? If they can go through with it,
why not we--great men that have the sea's good health in them? Bear up,
my boy, well find a haven presently."

I didn't believe