ut of sight, like you or me
might," said Cap'n Bartlet, thoughtfully. "He's filled too much space
and pulled through too many scrapes. He's had his way too often with men
and devils--and women too."

We were strung along the rail on the after-deck of the little _Aurora
Bird_, as she began to grope her passage through the barrier reef, a
silent lot. Talk had been cheap enough on the long stretch up the Coral
Sea, when every possible theory of Albro's fate, and the fate of his
three white shipmates and their native crew, had been thrashed to
weariness. But now suspense held us all by the throat, for we were come
at last to Barange, the falling-off place.

And something else held us--I could call it a spell and not be so far
wrong. The lazy airs offshore bore down to us the scent that is like
nothing else in the world, of rotting jungle and teeming soil; of
poisonous, lush green, and rare, sleepy blossoms, heavy with death and
ardent with a fierce vitality. This is the breath of Papua, stirring
warm on her lips, that none who has known between loathing and desire
can ever forget. Many men have known it, traders, pearlers, recruiters,
gold hunters, and eagerly have sought to know more and have died
seeking. There she lies, the last enigma, guarding her secrets still
behind her savage coasts and the fringe of her untracked forests--the
black sphinx of the seas, lovely, vast, and cruel.

We had been watching the widening gap of the bay off our quarter, the
palm-tufted threads of beach, the sullen hills aquiver in the heat haze
and the nameless dim mountains beyond. For an hour or more the only
sounds had been Bartlet's gruff orders to the Kanaka at the wheel, the
gentle crush of foam overside, the musical cry of the leadsman and the
tap-tap of reef points and creak of tackle as our sails slatted and
filled again. Each one of us was intent for some sign of the disaster.
Each one of us had a question pressing on his tongue--pretty much the
same question, I judge--but nobody cared to voice it until the cap'n
spoke. He had had, we knew, rather a special interest in Albro....
"Throw him how you like, he'd land on his feet," he said.

"Aye," confirmed Peters, the lank trader from Samarai. "Or if so be he
couldn't stand, why the crowd would fairly fight for the privilege of
proppin' him up and buying him the last drink in the house."

"You think he's alive?" piped Harris then.

"I think he's alive," said Bartlet, without turni