on shoulder, and stepped out on the
land. One by one they disappeared into the runway tunnel, and when the
last was ashore he ordered the boat back to the ship.

"Nothing doing here this trip," he told the mate. "We'll up hook and out
in the morning."

The quick tropic twilight swiftly blent day and darkness. Overhead all
stars were out. No faintest breath of air moved over the water, and the
humid heat beaded the faces and bodies of both men with profuse sweat.
They ate their deck-spread supper languidly and ever and anon used their
forearms to wipe the stinging sweat from their eyes.

"Why a man should come to the Solomons--beastly hole," the mate
complained.

"Or stay on," the captain rejoined.

"I'm too rotten with fever," the mate grumbled. "I'd die if I left.
Remember, I tried it two years ago. It takes the cold weather to bring
out the fever. I arrived in Sydney on my back. They had to take me to
hospital in an ambulance. I got worse and worse. The doctors told me
the only thing to do was to head back where I got the fever. If I did I
might live a long time. If I hung on in Sydney it meant a quick finish.
They packed me on board in another ambulance. And that's all I saw of
Australia for my holiday. I don't want to stay in the Solomons. It's
plain hell. But I got to, or croak."

He rolled, at a rough estimate, thirty grains of quinine in a cigarette
paper, regarded the result sourly for a moment, then swallowed it at a
gulp. This reminded Van Horn, who reached for the bottle and took a
similar dose.

"Better put up a covering cloth," he suggested.

Borckman directed several of the boat's crew in the rigging up of a thin
tarpaulin, like a curtain along the shore side of the _Arangi_. This was
a precaution against any bushwhacking bullet from the mangroves only a
hundred feet away.

Van Horn sent Tambi below to bring up the small phonograph and run off
the dozen or so scratchy, screechy records that had already been under
the needle a thousand times. Between records, Van Horn recollected the
girl, and had her haled out of her dark hole in the lazarette to listen
to the music. She obeyed in fear, apprehensive that her time had come.
She looked dumbly at the big fella white master, her eyes large with
fright; nor did the trembling of her body cease for a long time after he
had made her lie down. The phonograph meant nothing to her. She knew
only fear--fear of this terrible white man