siness of his, catching wild birds and dragging them about as though
he were an animal.

Evidently he was ashamed of himself, for he had dropped the duck. I
watched it floating by on the waves, its head under water. Suddenly
something jerked it under, a fish perhaps, for it did not come up and
float again, as far as I could see.

When I went back to camp Grue lay apparently asleep on the north side of
the fire. I glanced at him in disgust and crawled into my tent.

The next day Evelyn Grey awoke with a headache and kept her tent. I had
all I could do to prevent Kemper from prescribing for her. I did that
myself, sitting beside her and testing her pulse for hours at a time,
while Kemper took one of Grue's grains and went off into the mangroves
and speared grunt and eels for a chowder which he said he knew how to
concoct.

Toward afternoon the pretty waitress felt much better, and I warned
Kemper and Grue that we should sail for Black Bayou after dinner.

* * * * *

Dinner was a mess, as usual, consisting of fried mullet and rice, and a
sort of chowder in which the only ingredients I recognised were sections
of crayfish.

After we had finished and had withdrawn from the fire, Grue scraped every
remaining shred of food into a kettle and went for it. To see him feed
made me sick, so I rejoined Miss Grey and Kemper, who had found a green
cocoanut and were alternately deriving nourishment from the milk inside
it.

[Illustration: "To see him feed made me sick."]

Somehow or other there seemed to me a certain levity about that
performance, and it made me uncomfortable; but I managed to smile a
rather sickly smile when they offered me a draught, and I took a pull at
the milk--I don't exactly know why, because I don't like it. But the moon
was up over the sea, now, and the dusk was languorously balmy, and I
didn't care to leave those two drinking milk out of the same cocoanut
under a tropic moon.

Not that my interest in Evelyn Grey was other than scientific. But after
all it was I who had discovered her.

We sailed as soon as Grue, gobbling and snuffling, had cleaned up the
last crumb of food. Kemper blandly offered to take Miss Grey into his
boat, saying that he feared my boat was overcrowded, what with the
paraphernalia, the folding cages, Grue, Miss Grey, and myself.

I sat on that suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him
Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seei