stretchers or pick-a-back, groaning and wailing, go by in
lugubrious procession. He saw the wind making on the clouded

horizon, and thought of the sick in the hospital. Here was
something waiting his hand to be done, and it was not in his nature

to lie down and sleep, or die, when any task remained undone.
The boss-boys were called and given their orders to rope down the

hospital with its two additions. He remembered the spare anchor-
chain, new and black-painted, that hung under the house suspended

from the floor-beams, and ordered it to be used on the hospital as
well. Other boys brought the coffin, a grotesque patchwork of

packing-cases, and under his directions they laid Hughie Drummond
in it. Half a dozen boys carried it down the beach, while he rode

on the back of another, his arms around the black's neck, one hand
clutching a prayer-book.

While he read the service, the blacks gazed apprehensively at the
dark line on the water, above which rolled and tumbled the racing

clouds. The first breath of the wind, faint and silken, tonic with
life, fanned through his dry-baked body as he finished reading.

Then came the second breath of the wind, an angry gust, as the
shovels worked rapidly, filling in the sand. So heavy was the gust

that Sheldon, still on his feet, seized hold of his man-horse to
escape being blown away. The Jessie was blotted out, and a strange

ominous sound arose as multitudinous wavelets struck foaming on the
beach. It was like the bubbling of some colossal cauldron. From

all about could be heard the dull thudding of falling cocoanuts.
The tall, delicate-trunked trees twisted and snapped about like

whip-lashes. The air seemed filled with their flying leaves, any
one of which, stem-on could brain a man. Then came the rain, a

deluge, a straight, horizontal sheet that poured along like a
river, defying gravitation. The black, with Sheldon mounted on

him, plunged ahead into the thick of it, stooping far forward and
low to the ground to avoid being toppled over backward.

"'He's sleeping out and far to-night,'" Sheldon quoted, as he
thought of the dead man in the sand and the rainwater trickling

down upon the cold clay.
So they fought their way back up the beach. The other blacks

caught hold of the man-horse and pulled and tugged. There were
among them those whose fondest desire was to drag the rider in the

sand and spring upon him and mash him into repulsive nothingness.
But the automaticpistol in his belt with its rattling, quick-

dealing death, and the automatic, death-defying spirit in the man
himself, made them refrain and buckle down to the task of hauling

him to safety through the storm.
Wet through and exhausted, he was nevertheless surprised at the

ease with which he got into a change of clothing. Though he was
fearfully weak, he found himself actually feeling better. The

disease had spent itself, and the mend had begun.
"Now if I don't get the fever," he said aloud, and at the same

moment resolved to go to taking quinine as soon as he was strong
enough to dare.

He crawled out on the veranda. The rain had ceased, but the wind,
which had dwindled to a half-gale, was increasing. A big sea had

sprung up, and the mile-long breakers, curling up to the over-fall
two hundred yards from shore, were crashing on the beach. The

Jessie was plunging madly to two anchors, and every second or third
sea broke clear over her bow. Two flags were stiffly undulating

from the halyards like squares of flexible sheet-iron. One was
blue, the other red. He knew their meaning in the Berande private

code--"What are your instructions? Shall I attempt to land boat?"
Tacked on the wall, between the signal locker and the billiard

rules, was the code itself, by which he verified the signal before
making answer. On the flagstaff gaff a boy hoisted a white flag

over a red, which stood for--"Run to Neal Island for shelter."
That Captain Oleson had been expecting this signal was apparent by

the celerity with which the shackles were knocked out of both
anchor-chains. He slipped his anchors, leaving them buoyed to be

picked up in better weather. The Jessie swung off under her full
staysail, then the foresail, double-reefed, was run up. She was

away like a racehorse, clearing Balesuna Shoal with half a cable-
length to spare. Just before she rounded the point she was

swallowed up in a terrificsquall that far out-blew the first.
All that night, while squall after squall smote Berande, uprooting

trees, overthrowing copra-sheds, and rocking the house on its tall
piles, Sheldon slept. He was unaware of the commotion. He never

wakened. Nor did he change his position or dream. He awoke, a new
man. Furthermore, he was hungry. It was over a week since food

had passed his lips. He drank a glass of condensed cream, thinned
with water, and by ten o'clock he dared to take a cup of beef-tea.

He was cheered, also, by the situation in the hospital. Despite
the storm there had been but one death, and there was only one

fresh case, while half a dozen boys crawled weakly away to the
barracks. He wondered if it was the wind that was blowing the

disease away and cleansing the pestilential land.
By eleven a messenger arrived from Balesuna village, dispatched by

Seelee. The Jessie had gone ashorehalf-way between the village
and Neal Island. It was not till nightfall that two of the crew

arrived, reporting the drowning of Captain Oleson and of the one
remaining boy. As for the Jessie, from what they told him Sheldon

could not but conclude that she was a total loss. Further to
hearten him, he was taken by a shivering fit. In half an hour he

was burning up. And he knew that at least another day must pass
before he could undertake even the smallest dose of quinine. He

crawled under a heap of blankets, and a little later found himself
laughing aloud. He had surely reached the limit of disaster.

Barring earthquake or tidal-wave, the worst had already befallen
him. The Flibberty-Gibbet was certainly safe in Mboli Pass. Since

nothing worse could happen, things simply had to mend. So it was,
shivering under his blankets, that he laughed, until the house-

boys, with heads together, marvelled at the devils that were in
him.

CHAPTER IV--JOAN LACKLAND
By the second day of the northwester, Sheldon was in collapse from

his fever. It had taken an unfairadvantage of his weak state, and
though it was only ordinary malarial fever, in forty-eight hours it

had run him as low as ten days of fever would have done when he was
in condition. But the dysentery had been swept away from Berande.

A score of convalescents lingered in the hospital, but they were
improving hourly. There had been but one more death--that of the

man whose brother had wailed over him instead of brushing the flies
away.

On the morning of the fourth day of his fever, Sheldon lay on the
veranda, gazing dimly out over the raging ocean. The wind was

falling, but a mighty sea was still thundering in on Berande beach,
the flying spray reaching in as far as the flagstaff mounds, the

foaming wash creaming against the gate-posts. He had taken thirty
grains of quinine, and the drug was buzzing in his ears like a nest

of hornets, making his hands and knees tremble, and causing a
sickening palpitation of the stomach. Once, opening his eyes, he

saw what he took to be an hallucination. Not far out, and coming
in across the Jessie's anchorage, he saw a whale-boat's nose thrust

skyward on a smoky crest and disappear naturally, as an actual
whale-boat's nose should disappear, as it slid down the back of the

sea. He knew that no whale-boat should be out there, and he was
quite certain no men in the Solomons were mad enough to be abroad

in such a storm.
But the hallucination persisted. A minute later, chancing to open