ested drinks. The captain
asked Darrow what he would have, but the question went unnoted.

"How I passed the next six months I could hardly tell you," he began
again, quite abruptly. "At times I was bored--fearfully bored. Yet the
element of mystery, of uncertainty, of underlying peril, gave a certain
zest to the affair. In the periods of dulness I found some amusement in
visiting the lower camp and baiting the Nigger. Slade will have told you
about him; he possessed quite a fund of bastard Voodooism: he possessed
more before I got through with him. Yes; if he had lived to return to his
country, I fancy he would have added considerably to Afro-American witch-
lore. You remember the vampire bats, Slade? And the devil-fires? Naturally
I didn't mention to you that the devil-fire business wasn't altogether as
clear to me as I pretended. It wasn't, though. But at the time it served
very well as an amusement. All the while I realised that my self-
entertainment was not without its element of danger, too: I remember
glances not altogether friendly but always a little doubtful, a little
awed. Even Handy Solomon, practical as he was, had a scruple or two of
superstition in his make-up, on which one might work. Only Eagen--Slade, I
mean--was beyond me there. You puzzled me not a little in those days,
Slade. Well....

"Did I say that I was sometimes annoyed by the doctor's attitude? Yes: it
seemed that he might have given me a little more of his confidence; but
one can't judge such a man as he was. Among the ordinary affairs of life
he had relied on me for every detail. Now he was independent of me.
Independent! I doubt if he remembered my existence at times. Even in his
blackest moods of depression he was sufficient unto himself. It was
strange.... How he did rage the day the chemicals from Washington went
wrong! I was washing my shirt in the hot water spring when he came bolting
out of the laboratory and keeled me over. I came out pretty indignant.
Apologise? Not at all. He just sputtered. His nearest approach to
coherence seemed to indicate a desire that I should go back to Washington
at once and destroy a perfectly reputable firm of chemists. Finally he
calmed down and took it out in entering it in his daily record. He was
quite proud of that daily record and remembered to write in it on an
average of once a week.

"Then the chest went wrong. Whether it had rusted a bit, or whether the
chemicals had got in their work on the