uch a hell of a fortune," growled Pulz, his evil little
white face thrust forward. "There's other things worth all the seal
trimmin's of the islands."

"Diamon's," gloomed the Nigger.

"You've hit it, Doctor," cut in Solomon.

There we were again, back to the old difficulty, only worse. Idleness
descended on us again. We grew touchy on little things, as a misplaced
plate, a shortage of firewood, too deep a draught at the nearly empty
bucket. The noise of bickering became as constant as the noise of the
surf. If we valued peace, we kept our mouths shut. The way a man spat,
or ate, or slept, or even breathed became a cause of irritation to
every other member of the company. We stood the outrage as long as
we could; then we objected in a wild and ridiculous explosion which
communicated its heat to the object of our wrath. Then there was a
fight. It needed only liquor to complete the deplorable state of
affairs.

Gradually the smaller things came to worry us more and more. A certain
harmless singer of the cricket or perhaps of the tree-toad variety
used to chirp his innocent note a short distance from our cabin. For
all I know he had done so from the moment of our installation, but
I had never noticed him before. Now I caught myself listening for his
irregular recurrence with every nerve on the quiver. If he delayed
by ever so little, it was an agony; yet when he did pipe up, his feeble
strain struck to my heart cold and paralysing like a dagger. And with
every advancing minute of the night I became broader awake, more
tense, fairly sweating with nervousness. One night--good God, was it
only last week? ... it seems ages ago, another existence ... a state
cut off from this by the wonder of a transmigration, at least ... Last
week!

I did not sleep at all. The moon had risen, had mounted the heavens,
and now was sailing overhead. By the fretwork of its radiance through
the chinks of our rudely-built cabin I had marked off the hours. A
thunderstorm rumbled and flashed, hull down over the horizon. It was
many miles distant, and yet I do not doubt that its electrical
influence had dried the moisture of our equanimity, leaving us
rattling husks for the winds of destiny to play upon. Certainly I can
remember no other time, in a rather wide experience, when I have felt
myself more on edge, more choked with the restless, purposeless
nervous energy that leaves a man's tongue parched and his eyes
staring. And still that inferna