and from the ends of their noses which were also pierced, projected horns of beads strung on stiff wire.  Their ears were pierced and distended to accommodate wooden plugs and sticks, pipes, and all manner of barbaric ornaments.  Their faces and bodies were tattooed or scarred in hideous designs.  In their sickness they wore no clothing, not even loin-cloths, though they retained their shell armlets, their bead necklaces, and their leather belts, between which and the skin were thrust naked knives.  The bodies of many were covered with horrible sores.  Swarms of flies rose and settled, or flew back and forth in clouds.

The white man went down the line, dosing each man with medicine.  To some he gave chlorodyne.  He was forced to concentrate with all his will in order to remember which of them could stand ipecacuanha, and which of them were constitutionally unable to retain that powerful drug.  One who lay dead he ordered to be carried out.  He spoke in the sharp, peremptory manner of a man who would take no nonsense, and the well men who obeyed his orders scowled malignantly.  One muttered deep in his chest as he took the corpse by the feet.  The white man exploded in speech and action.  It cost him a painful effort, but his arm shot out, landing a back-hand blow on the black’s mouth.

“What name you, Angara?” he shouted.  “What for talk ’long you, eh?  I knock seven bells out of you, too much, quick!”

With the automatic swiftness of a wild animal the black gathered himself to spring.  The anger of a wild animal was in his eyes; but he saw the white man’s hand dropping to the pistol in his belt.  The spring was never made.  The tensed body relaxed, and the black, stooping over the corpse, helped carry it out.  This time there was no muttering.

“Swine!” the white man gritted out through his teeth at the whole breed of Solomon Islanders.

He was very sick, this white man, as sick as the black men who lay helpless about him, and whom he attended.  He never knew, each time he entered the festering shambles, whether or not he would be able to complete the round.  But he did know in large degree of certainty that, if he ever fainted there in the midst of the blacks, those who were able would be at his throat like ravening wolves.

Part way down the line a man was dying.  He gave orders for his removal as soon as he had breathed his last.  A black stuck his head inside the shed door, saying,—­

“Four fella sick too much.”

Fresh cases, still able to walk, they clustered about the spokesman.  The white man singled out the weakest, and put him in the place just vacated by the corpse.  Also, he indicated the next weakest, telling him to wait for a place until the next man died.  Then, ordering one of the well men to take a squad from the field-force and build a lean-to addition to the hospital, he continued along the run-way, administering medicine and cracking jokes in beche-de-mer English to cheer the sufferers.  Now and again, from the far end, a weird wail was raised.  When he arrived there he found the noise was emitted by a boy who was not sick.  The white man’s wrath was immediate.