“I’ve often wondered,” I confessed, thinking to bring Hanson to something I wanted to hear, “what happened to your company.  Once we had a word of Purdy, but never of Jessie or of you.”

“Well, now I’m telling you.  But you’d have been past wondering if you’d been with us.  Purdy wasn’t companionable.  He’d tell me it was hot.  And it was.  You could feel that yourself.  Jessie cooked our meals.  Her galley could have been only a shade better than the engine-room.  She began to look rather faded.  At last I was the only one who hadn’t been down with fever.  We crawled on and on, and the only question was where we ourselves would end, for the forest and the river were never going to.  But you didn’t care.  I’d never been better in my life, and here was the thing I’d always wanted to see.  I could have gone on for ever like that, wondering what we should see round the next corner.

“Our big troubles were to come.  Up to then, we hadn’t run into anything really drastic after turning a corner.  I suppose we had had about a month of it, and God knows where we were, but we had nobody to ask; and then we ran on a sandbar.  The jungle met overhead.  We were in what was only a dark drain through the forest.  So this, I thought, is where we throw in our hand.  We might as well have been in another planet for all the chance we had of getting away from that place.  We were aground for two days; the river then rose a foot, and we came off.  The men were complaining among themselves by then.  I heard them talking to each other about chucking it.  It was bound to come.  This day they went aft in a body to Purdy.  There stood Purdy, a little object in white against the gloom of the forest, and he looked about as futile as the last match in a wind at night.  He stood fingering a beard he had grown.  One of the men was beginning to talk truculently at him.  Just then Jessie appeared from below, between me and the group.  She had been down with fever for some days, and she surprised me as much as a ghost.  She looked rather like one, too.  She stood watching Purdy, without moving.  He didn’t look at her, though he must have known she was there.  I’m pretty sure we had to thank her for what happened to us afterwards, for it was then that Purdy began shaking his finger at that big stoker who was shouting.  I’d never seen him with such an expression before.  As near as he could be wild, he was.  ‘We’re going on,’ said Purdy to them very distinctly.  ’This ship continues her voyage.  If you want to leave her here, I’ll put you ashore.’  He walked away some paces, and came back to the men.  Then he said something more in his usual voice.  ’Do you men tell me you’re afraid of the job?  I don’t believe it.  It can be done.  We’ll do it.  We’ll do it.  Mr. Hanson,’ he called out, ’we are ready to get under way.  Would you please stand by?’