“‘You’ll have to get out of this,’ I told her.

“‘Can’t be done, Doctor,’ she said coolly.

“’It can.  A liner for England will be here in another week, and you must take it.’

“‘I don’t,’ she said.  She was quiet enough, but she seemed a very wilful woman.  ‘I’ve got my job here.’

“I told her that the skipper of her ship would never carry out his orders, because they could not be carried out.  I told her, what was perfectly true, that their craft would rot on a sandbar, or find cataracts, or that they’d all get eaten by cannibals, or die of something nasty.  I admit I tried to frighten her.

“‘It’s no good, Doctor,’ she said.  ’You can’t worry me.  I’ve got my work to do in this ship, like the others.’

“‘Pooh!’ I said to her.  ’Cooking and that.  Anybody could do it.  Let the men do it.  It’s not a woman’s job.’

“‘You’re wrong,’ she said.  ‘It’s mine.  You don’t know.’

“I began to get annoyed with this stubborn creature.  I told her she would die, if she didn’t leave the working of that ship to those who ought to do it.

“‘Who ought?’ she asked me, in a bit of a temper.  ’I know what I have to do.  I’m going through with it.  It’s no good talking.  I’ll take my chance, like the rest.’

“So I had to tell her that I was there because the master of her ship had sent for me to give my advice.  My business was to say what she ought to do.

“‘I don’t want to be told.  I know,’ she said.  ’The captain sent for you.  Talk to him.’

“My temper was going, and I told her that it was something to know the captain himself had enough sense to send for me.

“‘Look here,’ she told me.  ’I’ve had enough of this.  I want to be alone.  Thank you for troubling to come over.’”

The doctor lifted his shoulders, and made a wry face, that might have been disdain or pity.

“I was leaving her, but she called to me, and I went back.  She held out her hand.  ’I do thank you for troubling about me.  Of course I do.  But I want to stay on here—­I must.’

“‘Well, you know the penalty,’ I said.  ‘I was bound to tell you that.’

“‘What of it?’ she said, and laughed at me.  ’We musn’t bother about penalties.  Good-bye!’

“I must say she made me feel that if the skipper of that ship had been of different metal, she might almost have pulled him through.  But what a man.  What a man!  I saw his miserable little figure standing not far from where my boat was when I was going.  He made as if he were coming to me, and then stopped.  I was going to take no notice of him, but went up and explained a thing or two.  I’ll bet he’ll remember them.  All he said was:  ‘I was afraid you’d never change her mind,’ and turned away.  What a man!  There was a pair for you.  I could understand him, but what could have been in her mind?  Whatever made her talk like that?  That’s the way of it.  There’s your romance of the tropics, and your squalid Garden of Eden, when you know it.  A monotonous and dreary job, and a woman.”