tastes running as they did, you got to
admit his judgment, no other place around the earth having quite so much
nature laid on it to the square inch. Mud and mangroves and sloughs and
swamps make a cozy home that suits a lot of queer inhabitants, mostly of
a kind you and me would be highly wishful to avoid. But Andrew Harben he
opened up his specimen cases and set out his little pickle bottles full
of alcohol and was happy, laughing quite humorous to himself at the idea
of getting paid thirty guilders a month for such a privilege.

The lantern at Andrew Harben's light must have been brought out by the
first Dutch navigator. A great iron scaffolding in the middle of his
shack held a tub of oil. Then there were eight flat wicks that led up
through a perforated sheet of iron from the oil tub, each cropping out
overhead by an old-fashioned thumbscrew feed. And around the wicks was
built the eight-sided glass cupola. Yes, it was a kind of overgrown
street lamp of a light, but mighty important in those waters just the
same.

The keeper's business was to have the oil tub always full and to climb
around and give the thumb-screws a twist every hour of the night. So
long as he kept his wicks trimmed and burning nobody cared what else he
did on the side. The skipper of the lighthouse tender that landed Andrew
Harben made this clear.

"Z' last mans what lived here got eats by z' crocodile," he said. "All
but z' feets of one, which we buried. Zat wass awright, only zey let z'
lights go out and zere wass wrecks. Oh, such wrecks because of zese dam
currents. Now, please, if you got mad, be so good to stay anyways by z'
lights until we bring anozzer mans, if it is all z' same to you."

"Don't worry about me," said Andrew Harben, who was a big, hearty chap.
"I shan't go mad, no fear. The poor fools probably hadn't enough brains
to keep from rattling loose. You see, I'm a scientist, I shall explore
the wonders of natural history. My work here in Borneo shall make me
famous and, who knows, may make my fortune as well. There was Philson,
who found how the nipa palm can be made to yield pure maple sirup at a
cost of one cent per gallon, and Biggins, who learned that the distilled
juice of the female mustard spider is a specific for the pip--both
humble investigators like myself. No. I'll have enough to keep me busy,
never fret."

"Yes," remarked the skipper, a most intelligent halfcaste, Andrew
Harben told me, being educated at the Ag