"Wait a bit!" he cried. "Jiggered if here ain't the very man I've been telling you about; running on one leg too, as if he was up to the same old dodge again. He _can't_ be. It's too steep!" Even as he spoke there was the bound of a bare foot in the verandah, and a hulking Neapolitan hopped into the bar with his other foot in his hand and apparent terror in his eyes. But his face was not white at all; it was flushed with running; and the actor seemed dazed, or disconcerted by the presence of an unknown audience. "Bitten again?" inquired Sam Eccles, genially. "Bitten by a coral. Bitten in my foot! Look, look at the marks. Per Dio! I am dead man. A drink--a drink!" "Hark at that!" said Sam Eccles, nudging the man whom he had been about to fight. "You're in luck; I never thought, when I was pitching you that yarn, that you'd see the same thing over again with your own eyes. Who'd have believed he'd try the same game twice? But don't he do it well?" And as Sam said this, he wrested the whisky-bottle from Pasquale's hands, and put that worthy down on his back. "No, you don't. Not this time, Squally. Not much!" The Neapolitan was up again in an instant, foaming at the mouth, and cursing volubly, but ready hands held him back. "You ought to have been an actor, old man," said one. "He ought so," laughed the drover. "He's a treat. I wouldn't have missed him for a lot." Pasquale spat in his face. "No, no, you don't see him at his best," said Sam Eccles, apologetically. "He's over-doing it. He was three times as good last trip." The actor turned and reviled him, struggling with his captors, kicking them harmlessly with his bare feet--gesticulating--pointing to the twin blood-spots on his left instep--and weeping prayers and curses in the same breath. But if none had heeded him at first, much less would they do so now; for he had fallen incontinently upon his native tongue. "A damned good performance," said the drover, wiping his face. "But I guess I'll burst him when he's finished." "I wouldn't," said the tolerant Eccles. "I let him off light last time. It's something to have an actor like him in the back-blocks. Look at that!" The Neapolitan lay bunched and knotted on the ground in a singularly convincing collapse. "I don't believe it's acting at all!" cried the youth from Paka, in a whinny of high excitement. "You're a new chum," retorted Sam Eccles. "What do you know about it? You wasn't even here last time." "I know a sham when I see one. There's not much sham about this!" And without more words the new chum fled the bar, a shout of laughter following him out into the heat. "These young chaps from home, they know so much," said Sam Eccles. "I tell you what, our friend was drunk this trip before he come in. That's what made him pile it on so. He's as paralytic now as he was last time after them two tumblers of whisky. Let's stick him in the same old corner, and drink his bloomin' health."