“Very well, I thank you, my man,” replied Percy Darrow drily.  “Remember those vampires, Doctor.”

He swung the lantern and departed without further speech.  We followed the spark of it until it disappeared in the arroyo.

Behind us bellowed the sea; over against us in the sky was the dull threatening glow of the volcano; about us were mysterious noises of crying birds, barking seals, rustling or rushing winds.  I felt the thronging ghosts of all the old world’s superstition swirling madly behind us in the eddies that twisted the smoke of our fire.

We wrecked the Golden Horn.  Forward was a rusted-out donkey engine, which we took to pieces and put together again.  It was no mean job, for all the running parts had to be cleaned smooth, and with the exception of a rudimentary knowledge on the part of Pulz and Perdosa, we were ignorant.  In fact we should not have succeeded at all had it not been for Percy Darrow and his lantern.  The first evening we took him over to the cliff’s edge he laughed aloud.

“Jove, boys, how could you guess it all wrong,” he wondered.

With a few brief words he set us right, Pulz, Perdosa, and I listening intently; the others indifferent in the hopelessness of being able to comprehend.  Of course, we went wrong again in our next day’s experiments; but Darrow was down two or three times a week, and gradually we edged toward a practical result.

His explanations consumed but a few moments.  After they were finished, we adjourned to the fire.

Thus we came gradually to a better acquaintance with the doctor’s assistant.  In many respects he remained always a puzzle, to me.  Certainly the men never knew how to take him.  He was evidently not only unafraid of them, but genuinely indifferent to them.

Yet he displayed a certain interest in their needs and affairs.  His practical knowledge was enormous.  I think I have told you of the completeness of his arrangements—­everything had been foreseen from grindstones to gas nippers.  The same quality of concrete speculation showed him what we lacked in our own lives.

There was, as you remember, the matter of Handy Solomon’s steel claw.  He showed Thrackles a kind of lanyard knot that deep-sea person had never used.  He taught Captain Selover how to make soft soap out of one species of seaweed.  Me, he initiated in the art of fishing with a white bone lure.  Our camp itself he reconstructed on scientific lines so that we enjoyed less aromatic smoke and more palatable dinner.  And all of it he did amusedly, as though his ideas were almost too obvious to need communication.

We became in a manner intimate with him.  He guyed the men in his indolent fashion, playing on their credulity, their good nature, even their forbearance.  They alternately grinned and scowled.  He left always a confused impression, so that no one really knew whether he cherished rancour against Percy Darrow or kindly feeling.