"I wonder," said Carter thoughtfully, "if I shall ever understand all the workings of the African mind." He went onto the veranda and peered out into the mists. A fleecy blanket covered the sea and blotted out the water, and all things of low elevation that floated thereon. In the distance, between him and the moon, the two black mastheads of an invisible steamer ploughed through the whiteness, but between him and it a whole fleet of canoes and surf boats might have been snugly tucked away from his sight. Then a sudden pang of coldness came upon him, which made him button up his white drill coat, and step back into the mess-room and huddle into a chair. "Fever lib," said White-Man's-Trouble looking at him critically. "I'm in for my usual two days' touch," said Carter, with the listlessness of the malaria already creeping over him. "You fit for quinine-palaver?" "I suppose so." The Krooboy fetched the quinine bottle from Mr. Smith's well-filled medicine shelf. "I'd some pills of my own somewhere." "Steamah pills. Dem Cappy Image pills no dam good. I eat dem box myself." "You thieving scoundrel!" "Oh, Carter, I tell you dem pills no good." He laid a hand on his midriff. "No fit for give you even small-small twist there. Oh, Carter, I save you lose your temper over dem pills when I eat 'em mine self." "I wish they'd been calomel. You'll get poisoned one of these days, Trouble, if you don't stop stealing. I've some corrosive sublimate tabloids for skin preserving stowed away somewhere, and if you bolt one of those, you lib for die one-time. Here, give me a dose of quinine." The Krooboy found a cigarette paper, tapped it full of the feathery white powder, and rolled it up. Carter put it on his tongue and swilled it down with whiskey and water. "Quick, now, get me some blankets," he chattered. "I shall burst if I don't sweat directly." White-Man's-Trouble packed him with rugs and coats, till in the baking atmosphere of the mess-room one wondered that any skin could resist the invitation. But presently the wraps were flung aside, and Carter sat aching and burning in his clammy drill clothes, with his skin bone-dry, and a feel in his head as though it were moving in and out like a concertina. "That last's the quinine," he told himself; and then, "I say, Trouble, you'd better think for your own neck now. I shall be otherwise occupied for the next thirty hours. You'll be well advised if you went away back to Smooth River. If the Okky men come here and knock me on the head, I really don't care. And if they'll only chop my unwholesome carcass, and get indigestion from it afterwards, I feel I shall get a grim enjoyment from watching their writhings from my own comfortable (or maybe uncomfortable) seat on the Other Side." "You lib for bad fever," said White-Man's-Trouble thoughtfully.