nd. We are doing God's
work, Sir John, and He is not likely to hinder us. So down with the
devil, say I. Cary, laughing killed the cat, but it won't cure a
Christian. Yeo, when an angel tells me that it's God's will that we
should all die like dogs in a ditch, I'll call this God's will; but not
before. Drew, you say your business is to sail the ship; then sail her
out of this infernal poison-trap this very morning, if you can, which
you can't. The mischief's in the air, and nowhere else. I felt it run
through me coming down last night, and smelt it like any sewer: and
if it was not in the air, why was my boat's crew taken first, tell me
that?"

There was no answer.

"Then I'll tell you why they were taken first: because the mist, when
we came through it, only rose five or six feet above the stream, and we
were in it, while you on board were above it. And those that were taken
on board this morning, every one of them, slept on the main-deck, and
every one of them, too, was in fear of the fever, whereby I judge two
things,--Keep as high as you can, and fear nothing but God, and we're
all safe yet."

"But the fog was up to our round-tops at sunrise this morning," said
Cary.

"I know it: but we who were on the half-deck were not in it so long as
those below, and that may have made the difference, let alone our having
free air. Beside, I suspect the heat in the evening draws the poison out
more, and that when it gets cold toward morning, the venom of it goes
off somehow."

How it went off Amyas could not tell (right in his facts as he was), for
nobody on earth knew I suppose, at that day; and it was not till
nearly two centuries of fatal experience that the settlers in America
discovered the simple laws of these epidemics which now every child
knows, or ought to know. But common sense was on his side; and Yeo rose
and spoke--

"As I have said before, many a time, the Lord has sent us a very young
Daniel for judge. I remember now to have heard the Spaniards say, how
these calentures lay always in the low ground, and never came more than
a few hundred feet above the sea."

"Let us go up those few hundred feet, then."

Every man looked at Amyas, and then at his neighbor.

"Gentlemen, 'Look the devil straight in the face, if you would hit him
in the right place.' We cannot get the ship to sea as she is; and if we
could, we cannot go home empty-handed; and we surely cannot stay here to
die of fever.--We must leave th