we didn't use our engine that day.
Besides, I wanted to take a little time thinking over my plans. I spent
most of the time studying the charts and pondering John P. Tobias's
narrative, which threw very little light on the situation. There was
little definite to go by but his mark of the compass engraven on a
certain rock in a wilderness of rocks; and such rocks as they were at
that.

As I thought of that particular kind of rock, I wondered too about my
three friends, trussed like fowls, on their coral rock couches. Of
course they had long since cut each other free, and were somewhere
active and evil-doing; and the thought of their faces seemed positively
sweet to me, for of such faces are made "the bright face of danger" that
all men are born to love.

Still the thought of that set me thinking too of my defences. I looked
well to my guns. The Commandant had made me accept the loan of a
particularly expert revolver that was, I could see, as the apple of his
eye. He must have cared for me a great deal to have lent it me, and it
was bright as the things we love.

Then I called Tom to me: "How about that sucking fish, Tom?" I asked.

"It's just cured, sar," he said. "I was going to offer it to you this
lunch time. It's dried out fine; couldn't be better. I'll bring it to
you this minute." And he went and was back again in a moment. "You must
wear it right over your heart," he said, "and you'll see there's not a
bullet can get near it. It's never been known for a bullet to go through
a sucking fish. Even if they come near, something in the air seems to
send them aside. It's God's truth."

"But, Tom," I said, "how about you?"

"I've worn one here, sar, for twenty years, and you can see for
yourself"--and he bared the brown chest beneath which beat the heart
that like nothing else in the world has made me believe in God.

And so we went spinning along, and, if only I had the gift of words, I
could make such pictures of the islands we sailed by, the colours of the
waters, the joy of our going--the white coral sand beaches and the big
cocoanut palms leaning over them, and the white surges that curled along
and along the surf reef, over and over again, running like children to
meet each other and join each other's hands, or like piano keys rippling
white under some master's fingers.

That night we made a good lee, and lay in a pool of stars, very tranquil
and alive with travelling lights, great globed fishes filled wit