was
to and then I beat it. I thought she might be going to start weepin'."

"I have no doubt the loneliness is getting on her nerves," said the
doctor. "And the rain--that's enough to make anyone jumpy," he continued
irritably. "Doesn't it ever stop in this confounded place?"

"It goes on pretty steady in the rainy season. We have three hundred
inches in the year. You see, it's the shape of the bay. It seems to
attract the rain from all over the Pacific."

"Damn the shape of the bay," said the doctor.

He scratched his mosquito bites. He felt very short-tempered. When the
rain stopped and the sun shone, it was like a hothouse, seething, humid,
sultry, breathless, and you had a strange feeling that everything was
growing with a savage violence. The natives, blithe and childlike by
reputation, seemed then, with their tattooing and their dyed hair, to
have something sinister in their appearance; and when they pattered
along at your heels with their naked feet you looked back instinctively.
You felt they might at any moment come behind you swiftly and thrust a
long knife between your shoulder blades. You could not tell what dark
thoughts lurked behind their wide-set eyes. They had a little the look
of ancient Egyptians painted on a temple wall, and there was about them
the terror of what is immeasurably old.

The missionary came and went. He was busy, but the Macphails did not
know what he was doing. Horn told the doctor that he saw the governor
every day, and once Davidson mentioned him.

"He looks as if he had plenty of determination," he said, "but when you
come down to brass tacks he has no backbone."

"I suppose that means he won't do exactly what you want," suggested the
doctor facetiously.

The missionary did not smile.

"I want him to do what's right. It shouldn't be necessary to persuade a
man to do that."

"But there may be differences of opinion about what is right."

"If a man had a gangrenous foot would you have patience with anyone who
hesitated to amputate it?"

"Gangrene is a matter of fact."

"And Evil?"

What Davidson had done soon appeared. The four of them had just finished
their midday meal, and they had not yet separated for the siesta which
the heat imposed on the ladies and on the doctor. Davidson had little
patience with the slothful habit. The door was suddenly flung open and
Miss Thompson came in. She looked round the room and then went up to
Davidson.

"You low-down skunk, wh