And Oswald went on to ask if he could have this extra table in his room, because these specimens of the disturbed dead was piling up on him and he wanted to keep ’em in order.  He had lighted one of his terrible cigars; so I said I would quickly go and see about a table.  I said that with his venomous cigar going I would quickly have to go and see about something or else have my olfactory nerve resected, which was a grand scientific phrase I had brightly picked out and could play with one finger.  It means having something done so you can’t smell any more.

The Prof laughed heartily, but Oswald only said he hadn’t supposed I would feel that way, considering the kind of tobacco my own cigarettes was made of, though he was sorry and would hereafter smoke out of doors.  He took a joke like a child taking castor oil.  Anyway, I went out and found a spare table in the storeroom, and the Chink took it to Oswald’s room.

The fateful moment was at hand for which Nature had been conspiring all these ages.  The Chink held the table up against him, with the legs sticking out, and Oswald went ahead to show him where to put it.  Close by the door, inside his room, was the lovely, yawning new trunk.  Oswald must of been afraid one of the table legs would spear it and mar its fair varnish.  He raised one hand to halt the table, then closed the trunk tenderly, snapped the lock, and moved it over into the corner, beyond chance of desecration.

Then he give careful directions for placing the table, which had to be carried round the foot of the bed and past another table, which held marine fossils and other fishbones.  It was placed between this table and still another, which held Oswald’s compass and microscope and his kill-kare kamp stove and his first-aid kit and his sportsman’s belt safe—­all neatly arranged in line.  I had followed to see if there was anything more he needed, and he said no, thank you.  So I come out here to look over my mail that had just come.

Ten minutes later I felt the presence of a human being and looked up to see that Oswald, the oldest living boy scout, was dying on his feet in the doorway there.  His face looked like he had been in jail three years.  I thought he had seen a ghost or had a heart shock.  He looked as if he was going to keel over.  He had me scared.  Finally he dragged himself over to the table here and says faintly: 

“I believe I should like a severe drink of whisky!”

I didn’t ask any questions.  I saw it must be some private grief; so I got the whisky.  It happened I had just one bottle in the house, and that was some perfectly terrible whisky that had been sent me by mistake.  It was liquid barbed wire.  Even a little drink of it would of been severe.  Two drinks would make you climb a tree like a monkey.  But the stricken Oswald seemed able to outfight it.  He poured out half a tumblerful, drunk it neat and refused water.  He strangled some, for he was only human after all.  Then he sagged down on the couch and looked up at me with a feeble and pathetic grin and says: