No, D., things must take a turn, or the game's lost and we'll go with it.
Success is the only thing that'll save their lives--and ours: we couldn't
stand failure in this. A man can walk to the gates of hell to do the
hardest trick, and he'll come back one great blister and live, if he's
done the thing he set out for; but if he doesn't do it, he falls into the
furnace. He never comes back. Dicky, things must be pulled our way, or
we go to deep damnation."

Dicky turned a little pale, for there was high nervous excitement in
Fielding's words; and for a moment he found it hard to speak. He was
about to say something, however, when Fielding continued.

"Norman there,"--he pointed to the deck-cabin, "Norman's the same. He
says it's do or die; and he looks it. It isn't like a few fellows
besieged by a host. For in that case you wait to die, and you fight to
the last, and you only have your own lives. But this is different.
We're fighting to save these people from themselves; and this slow,
quiet, deadly work, day in, day out, in the sickening sun and smell-
faugh! the awful smell in the air--it kills in the end, if you don't
pull your game off. You know it's true."

His eyes had an eager, almost prayerful look; he was like a child in his
simple earnestness. His fingers moved over the maps on the table, in
which were little red and white and yellow flags, the white flags to mark
the towns and villages where they had mastered the disease, the red flags
to mark the new ones attacked, the yellow to indicate those where the
disease was raging. His fingers touched one of the flags, and he looked
down.

"See, D. Here are two new places attacked to-day.