and their faces were streaming with
perspiration. They sat down on deck-chairs beside the sick man, called
to the steward for a bottle of beer, and asked him how he felt.

Carr made a sudden effort and sat up.

"D---- bad, Oliver! I have about six hundred and forty-nine pains all
over me, and no two of them in the same place. I've swilled enough water
to float a battleship; and, look here! you must give me some beer: a
bottle--two bottles--a gallon--a cask! Beer I will have if I perish
like a beast in the field. I can't drink water like that-it's as hot as
-----"

Morrison, the Scotch engineer, smiled. "Don't swear, Carr. Ye shall
have just one long drink of beer. 'Twill do ye no great harm on such a
roasting day as this."

The steward brought two bottles of lager beer, and Carr eagerly extended
his thin, brown hand for the creamy, tempting liquid poured out for him
by the mate. He drank it off and then laid down again.

"When are we getting out of this beastly hole, Oliver?" he asked.

"To night, I expect-that is, if the skipper comes aboard fairly sober.
He doesn't often get too much grog aboard, but this island is one of the
places where he is bound to get loaded up. The two traders ashore are
countrymen of his, I believe, though they call themselves Britishers."

Carr nodded. "Dutchmen of some kind, eh?"

"Yes, like himself. He's a Dane, though if you told him so he'd get
nasty over it."

"He's a nasty brute, anyway," said Carr wearily. "I don't like that
shifty eye of his. And I think he's a bit of a sneak."

"You needn't _think_ it; you can be sure of it. I'll prove it to you in
a minute," said the mate. "Both he and that fat beast of a supercargo
are a pair of sneaks, and they hate you like poison. What have you done
to offend them?"

"Nothing that I know of. But I have always suspected that neither of
them are too fond of me. Hendry I consider a low-lived scoundrel. I met
his wife and daughters in Sydney a year ago--went to his house with
him. They think he's a perfect saint, and at the time I thought so too,
considering he's been in the island trade for ten years. But I know what
he is pretty well by now. He's not fit to be married to a decent white
woman and have children."

The mate assented. "You're right, Carr. He's a double-faced swab, and
a thundering hypocrite as well. There's only one good point about
him--he's a rattling good sailor man. As for Sam Chard, he's simply
a drunken bully. I s