arm.

It was two or three days before Bananas was on his feet again, and when
he came out of his cabin his face was torn and swollen. Through the
darkness of his skin you saw the livid bruise. Butler saw him slinking
along the deck and called him. The mate went to him without a word.

"See here, Bananas," he said to him, fixing his spectacles on his
slippery nose, for it was very hot. "I ain't going to fire you for this,
but you know now that when I hit, I hit hard. Don't forget it and don't
let me have any more funny business."

Then he held out his hand and gave the mate that good-humoured, flashing
smile of his which was his greatest charm. The mate took the
outstretched hand and twitched his swollen lips into a devilish grin.
The incident in the captain's mind was so completely finished that when
the three of them sat at dinner he chaffed Bananas on his appearance. He
was eating with difficulty and, his swollen face still more distorted by
pain, he looked truly a repulsive object.

That evening, when he was sitting on the upper deck, smoking his pipe, a
shiver passed through the captain.

"I don't know what I should be shiverin' for on a night like this," he
grumbled. "Maybe I've gotten a dose of fever. I've been feelin' a bit
queer all day."

When he went to bed he took some quinine, and next morning he felt
better, but a little washed out, as though he were recovering from a
debauch.

"I guess my liver's out of order," he said, and he took a pill.

He had not much appetite that day and towards evening he began to feel
very unwell. He tried the next remedy he knew, which was to drink two or
three hot whiskies, but that did not seem to help him much, and when in
the morning he surveyed himself in the glass he thought he was not
looking quite the thing.

"If I ain't right by the time we get back to Honolulu I'll just give Dr
Denby a call. He'll sure fix me up."

He could not eat. He felt a great lassitude in all his limbs. He slept
soundly enough, but he awoke with no sense of refreshment; on the
contrary he felt a peculiar exhaustion. And the energetic little man,
who could not bear the thought of lying in bed, had to make an effort to
force himself out of his bunk. After a few days he found it impossible
to resist the languor that oppressed him, and he made up his mind not to
get up.

"Bananas can look after the ship," he said. "He has before now."

He laughed a little to himself as he thought how of