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 automatic pistol 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