the light fans of the stifling and almost stagnant air.

"Hey!" Van Horn suddenly shouted. "Hey, you fella boy stick 'm head
out belong you!"

As if in a transformation scene, the apparently tenantless jungle
spawned into life. On the instant a hundred stark savages appeared.

They broke forth everywhere from the vegetation. All were armed,
some with Snider rifles and ancient horse pistols, others with bows

and arrows, with long throwing spears, with war-clubs, and with
long-handled tomahawks. In a flash, one of them leaped into the

sunlight in the open space where runway and water met. Save for
decorations, he was naked as Adam before the Fall. A solitary white

feather uprose from his kinky, glossy, black hair. A polished
bodkin of white petrified shell, with sharp-pointed ends, thrust

through a hole in the partition of his nostrils, extended five
inches across his face. About his neck, from a cord of twisted

coconut sennit, hung an ivory-white necklace of wild-boar's tusks.
A garter of white cowrie shells encircled one leg just below the

knee. A flamingscarlet flower was coquettishly stuck over one ear,
and through a hole in the other ear was threaded a pig's tail so

recently severed that it still bled.
As this dandy of Melanesia leaped into the sunshine, the Snider

rifle in his hands came into position, aimed from his hip, the
generous muzzlebearing directly on Van Horn. No less quick was Van

Horn. With equal speed he had snatched his rifle and brought it to
bear from his hip. So they stood and faced each other, death in

their finger-tips, forty feet apart. The million years between
barbarism and civilization also yawned between them across that

narrow gulf of forty feet. The hardest thing for modern, evolved
man to do is to forget his ancient training. Easiest of all things

is it for him to forget his modernity and slip back across time to
the howling ages. A lie in the teeth, a blow in the face, a love-

thrust of jealousy to the heart, in a fraction of an instant can
turn a twentieth-century philosopher into an ape-like arborean

pounding his chest, gnashing his teeth, and seeing red.
So Van Horn. But with a difference. He straddled time. He was at

one and the same instant all modern, all imminently primitive,
capable of fighting in redness of tooth and claw, desirous of

remaining modern for as long as he could with his will master the
study of ebon black of skin and dazzling white of decoration that

confronted him.
A long ten seconds of silence endured. Even Jerry, he knew not why,

stilled the growl in his throat. Five score of head-hunting
cannibals on the fringe of the jungle, fifteen Su'u return blacks in

the boat, seven black boat's crew, and a solitary white man with a
cigar in his mouth, a rifle at his hip, and an Irish terrier

bristling against his bare calf, kept the solemn pact of those ten
seconds, and no one of them knew or guessed what the outcome would

be.
One of the return boys, in the bow of the whaleboat, made the peace

sign with his palm extendedoutward and weaponless, and began to
chirp in the unknown Su'u dialect. Van Horn held his aim and

waited. The dandy lowered his Snider, and breath came more easily
to the chests of all who composed the picture.

"Me good fella boy," the dandy piped, half bird-like and half elf.
"You big fella fool too much," Van Horn retorted harshly, dropping

his gun into the stern-sheets, motioning to rowers and steersman to
turn the boat around, and puffing his cigar as carelesslycasual as

if, the moment before, life and death had not been the debate.
"My word," he went on with fine irritableassumption. "What name

you stick 'm gun along me? Me no kai-kai (eat) along you. Me kai-
kai along you, stomach belong me walk about. You kai-kai along me,

stomach belong you walk about. You no like 'm kai-kai Su'u boy
belong along you? Su'u boy belong you all the same brother along

you. Long time before, three monsoon before, me speak 'm true
speak. Me say three monsoon boy come back. My word, three monsoon

finish, boy stop along me come back."
By this time the boat had swung around, reversing bow and stern, Van

Horn pivoting so as to face the Snider-armed dandy. At another
signal from Van Horn the rowers backed water and forced the boat,

stern in, up to the solid ground of the runway. And each rower, his
oar in position in case of attack, privily felt under the canvas

flap to make sure of the exact location of his concealed Lee-
Enfield.

"All right boy belong you walk about?" Van Horn queried of the
dandy, who signified the affirmative in the Solomon Islands fashion

by half-closing his eyes and nodding his head upward, in a queer,
perky way;

"No kai-kai 'm Su'u fella boy suppose walk about along you?"
"No fear," the dandy answered. "Suppose 'm Su'u fella boy, all

right. Suppose 'm no fella Su'u boy, my word, big trouble.
Ishikola, big fella black marster along this place, him talk 'm me

talk along you. Him say any amount bad fella boy stop 'm along
bush. Him say big fella white marster no walk about. Him say jolly

good big fella white marster stop 'm along ship."
Van Horn nodded in an off-hand way, as if the information were of

little value, although he knew that for this time Su'u would furnish
him no fresh recruits. One at a time, compelling the others to

remain in their places, he directed the return boys astern and
ashore. It was Solomon Islands tactics. Crowding was dangerous.

Never could the blacks be risked to confusion in numbers. And Van
Horn, smoking his cigar in lordlyindifferent fashion, kept his

apparently uninterested eyes glued to each boy who made his way aft,
box on shoulder, and stepped out on the land. One by one they

disappeared into the runway tunnel, and when the last was ashore he
ordered the boat back to the ship.

"Nothing doing here this trip," he told the mate. "We'll up hook
and out in the morning."

The quick tropictwilightswiftly blent day and darkness. Overhead
all stars were out. No faintest breath of air moved over the water,

and the humid heat beaded the faces and bodies of both men with
profuse sweat. They ate their deck-spread supper languidly and ever

and anon used their forearms to wipe the stinging sweat from their
eyes.

"Why a man should come to the Solomons--beastly hole," the mate
complained.

"Or stay on," the captain rejoined.
"I'm too rotten with fever," the mate grumbled. "I'd die if I left.

Remember, I tried it two years ago. It takes the cold weather to
bring out the fever. I arrived in Sydney on my back. They had to

take me to hospital in an ambulance. I got worse and worse. The
doctors told me the only thing to do was to head back where I got

the fever. If I did I might live a long time. If I hung on in
Sydney it meant a quick finish. They packed me on board in another

ambulance. And that's all I saw of Australia for my holiday. I
don't want to stay in the Solomons. It's plain hell. But I got to,

or croak."
He rolled, at a rough estimate, thirty grains of quinine in a

cigarette paper, regarded the result sourly for a moment, then
swallowed it at a gulp. This reminded Van Horn, who reached for the

bottle and took a similar dose.
"Better put up a covering cloth," he suggested.

Borckman directed several of the boat's crew in the rigging up of a
thin tarpaulin, like a curtain along the shore side of the Arangi.

This was a precaution against any bushwhacking bullet from the
mangroves only a hundred feet away.

Van Horn sent Tambi below to bring up the small phonograph and run
off the dozen or so scratchy, screechy records that had already been

under the needle a thousand times. Between records, Van Horn
recollected the girl, and had her haled out of her dark hole in the

lazarette to listen to the music. She obeyed in fear, apprehensive
that her time had come. She looked dumbly at the big fella white