which Milo flung at him.

The man was sparsely and sketchily clad. At first. his
tanned face seemed to be of several different colors and to
have been modeled by some bungling caricaturist. Yet, despite
this eccentricity of aspect, something about the obsequiously
hurrying man struck Brice as familiar. And, all at once, he
recognized him.

This was the big beach comber with whom Gavin had fought
barely twenty-four hours earlier. The man bore bruises and
swellings a-plenty on his rugged features, where Brice's
whalebone blows had crashed. And they had distorted his face
almost past recognition. He moved, too, with manifest
discomfort, as if all his huge body were as sore as his
visage.

"Hello, Roke!!" hailed Milo genially, then in amaze. "what in
thunder have you been doing to yourself? Been trying to stop
the East Coast Flyer? Or did you just get into an argument
with one of the channel dredges?"

"Fell," said Roke. succinctly, jerking his thumb back toward
the corrugated iron hut. "Climbed my roof to mend a leak.
Fell. My face hit every bump. Then I landed on a pile of
coconuts. I'm sore all over. I--"

He gurgled, mouthingly, as his swollen eyes chanced to light
on Gavin Brice. who was just following Milo from the launch
to the float. And his discolored and unshaven jaw went slack.