"Perish the thought," said Venning, throwing a banana peel at a
brilliant flash of phosphorescent light in the oily waters. "Yet the
man-who-was-tired, he of the parchment face, who sat on a verandah
with his feet on the rail, prophesied that within seven days we
should be sighing for English bacon in the country where a white man
could breathe."

"There is no snap in the air; but I can breathe freely. See;" and
Compton took a deep breath.

"That is the teaching of the hunter," said Venning, wisely. "Deep
breathing gives a man deep lungs. That is his teaching. Also this,
that a man should keep his skin clean and his muscles supple by hard
rubbing after the bath. Therefore, I did ask the bo'sun to turn the
hose on us in the morning when they clean down the decks. It is good
friction."

"And he has another saying--that it is good for the skin to apply
oil with the palm of the hand till the skin reddens. I have a smell
about me like a blue gum-tree, for the ointment he gave contains
eucalyptus oil."

"And the fat of a goat. There is much virtue in goats' fat, and the
eucalyptus is not to the taste of the trumpeter."

"The mosquito?"

"Even so."

"Then why don't you say so in good English?" and Compton dropped