"Oh, I see," said the skipper. "Yes. Exactly. That's all very big and grand, and it might act sometimes and in some places, and especially when there are men well-armed to back it up as well; but if you had thought it out, my lad, I think you would have seen that it could have had no chance here.--Oh, that my dose, Poole? Half or full?" he continued, as he raised his hand to take a little silver mug which his son had brought. "Only half, father," replied the lad. "You had a full dose just before you went to sleep." "To be sure; so I did," said the skipper, whose hand was trembling as he took the cup.--"It's of no use to ask you to drink with me, Mr Burnett?" Fitz shook his head. "No, I suppose not," continued the skipper; "but we are going to be good friends, all the same." Fitz watched the sick man as he drained the cup. "Ah! Bitter stuff! If you just think of the bitterest thing you ever tasted and multiply it by itself, square it, as we used to call it at school, you would only come near to the taste of this. But it's not a nasty bitter, sickly and nauseous and all that, but a bitter that you can get almost to like in time.--Thank you, Poole," and he handed back the cup. "It makes me feel better at once. Nasty things, these fevers, Squire Burnett, and very wonderful too that a man, a strong man, should be going about hale and hearty in these hot countries, and then breathe in something all at once that turns him up like this. And then more wonderful still that the savage people lower down yonder in South America--higher up, I ought to say, for it was the folk amongst the mountains--should have found out a shrub whose bark would kill the fever poison and make a man himself again. They say--put the cup away, Poole--that wherever a poisonous thing grows there's another plant grows close at hand which will cure the ill it does, bane and antidote, my lad, stinging-nettles and dock at home, you know. I don't know that it holds quite true, but I do know that there are fevers out here, and quinine acts as a cure. But there's one thing I want to know, and it's this, how in the name of all that's wonderful these South American people first found it out."