of the experience, and nodded his head at me. He leaned over the table
to me in confidence. "Have you ever been to the tropics? I don't mean
calling at Colombo or Rio. I mean the back of things where there's a
remarkable sun experimenting with low life and hardly anybody looking on.
If ever you get the chance, you take it. It alters all your ideas of
time and space. You begin to learn what stuff life is made of when you
see a tropical forest, and see nothing else for months. On the other
hand," he said, "you become nothing. You see it doesn't matter to others
what happens to you, and you don't care much what happens to others."

"You don't care? It doesn't matter?" I said in doubt to this young
mathematician and philosopher, who had been experimenting with life.
"Isn't that merely romantic?"

"Romance--romance be damned! I got down to the facts."

"Well, get me down to them. I should like the facts. I want to hear
what this strange voyage was like."

"As you know," Hanson assured me, "I went out merely to see what would
happen to myself, in certain circumstances. I knew I was going to be
scared, and I was. There is a place called Tabacol on the river, and we
anchored there after our ocean passage for more than a week. I don't
know why, and it was no use asking Purdy. Probably he didn't know. I
had made up my mind to make the engines move and stop, whenever ordered,
and then see where we are. Anyway, after the racket of the sea voyage,
when the engines stopped at Tabacol the utter silence was as if something
which had been waiting there for you at once pounced. The quiet was of
an awful weight. I could hardly breathe, and chanced to look at the
thermometer. It stood at 132 degrees. I don't know how I got outside,