to land our cargo of a ton and a half of
machinery, and place it on the company's territory above the falls. 'You
can see for yourself,' Purdy said to me pathetically, 'that I can't
deliver the _Cygnet_ there. But I think I am right in making her secure
and leaving her here, and reporting it. What else can I do? They ought
to give me a clean receipt.'

"It was funny enough, that anxiety about a ship and machinery where there
was nothing but monkeys and parrots, but I agreed with him, and we got to
work landing those packages of mining gear, which only an expert could
understand, in a place where nothing was likely to happen till the Last
Day. The way we sweated over it! And then warped the stuff with snatch
blocks through four miles of jungle. Yes; and buried two men of our
company on the way. But we did get the cargo on to the company's damned
land at last, and a nice lot of half-naked scarecrows we looked, with
nothing to fill our hollow cheeks but whiskers. There the name of the
place was all right, 'Tres Irmaos,' painted over a shed. The shed was
falling to pieces. There was nobody about. Nothing but a little open
space, and the forest around, and the sun blazing down at us.

"We pushed on for headquarters, Purdy leading us. A hundred miles to go!
I don't know how we did it. Three more died, including the mate, but we
didn't bury those. Purdy kept on the move. He told me, after an
eternity, that it was just ahead of us, and at last we did come to some
other men. They were Colombians. We astonished them, but nothing could
astonish us any more. Purdy learned that he had got to our ultimate
destination all right. Then some fellow appeared, in a gaudy uniform and
a sword, who spoke English. When Purdy asked to be taken to the manager
of the company, this gay chap laughed fiercely, and kept looking at Purdy
in triumph. 'Him?' he shouted, when he had got enough fun out of it,
'im? He's dead. We execute him. All those people--they go. No more
company. All finish. No good.' He was very bright about it.

"Purdy never said a word. All he did was to turn to me, and then stare
beyond me with big eyes at something which couldn't possibly have been
there."

VII. Not in the Almanac

It was an unlucky Friday morning; "and, what's more," the chief officer
stopped on the gangway to call down to me on the quay, "a black cat
crossed my path when I left home this morning, and a very nice black
c