irl
was not reassured. She would have sat up with Sanders, but the idea so
alarmed Hamilton that she abandoned it.

"He'd never forgive me," he said. "My dear girl, he'll be as right as a
trivet in the morning."

She was sceptical, but, to her amazement, Sanders turned up at breakfast
his usual self, save that he was a little weary-eyed, and that his hand
shook when he raised his coffee-cup to his lips. A miracle, thought
Patricia Hamilton, and said so.

"Not at all, dear miss," said Bones, now, as ever, accepting full credit
for all phenomena she praised, whether natural or supernatural. "This is
simply nothin' to what happened to me. Ham, dear old feller, do you
remember when I was brought down from the Machengombi River? Simply
delirious--ravin'--off my head."

"So much so," said Hamilton, slicing the top off his egg, "that we
didn't think you were ill."

"If you'd seen me," Bones went on, solemnly shaking one skinny
forefinger at the girl, "you'd have said: 'Bones is for the High Jump.'"

"I should have said nothing so vulgar, Bones," she retorted. "And was it
malaria?"

"Ah," said Hamilton triumphantly, "I was too much of a gentleman to hint
that it wasn't. Press the question, Pat."

Bones shrugged his shoulders and cast a look of withering contempt upon
his superior.

"In the execution of one's duty, dear Miss Patricia H," he said, "the
calibre of the gun that lays a fellow low, an' plunges his relations an'
creditors into mournin', is beside the point. The only consideration, as
dear old Omar says, is--

"'The movin' finger hits, an', havin' hit,
Moves on, tum tumty tumty tay,
And all a feller does won't make the slightest difference.'"

"Is that Omar or Shakespeare?" asked the dazed Hamilton.

"Be quiet, dear. What was the illness, Bones?"

"Measles," said Hamilton brutally, "and German measles at that."

"Viciously put, dear old officer, but, nevertheless, true," said Bones
buoyantly. "But when the hut's finished, I'll return good for evil.
There's goin' to be a revolution, Miss Patricia Hamilton. No more fever,
no more measles--health, wealth, an' wisdom, by gad!"

"Sunstroke," diagnosed Hamilton. "Pull yourself together, Bones--you're
amongst friends."

But Bones was superior to sarcasm.

There was a creature of Lieutenant Tibbetts a solemn, brown man, who
possessed, in addition to a vocabulary borrowed from a departed
professor of bacteriology, a rough working knowledge