He unrolled a broad leaf on which he had drawn a rough sketch of the island, probable north and possible latitude and longitude. Again the chill of dismay and apprehension which I had felt before in Triplett's presence ran up and down my spine. It was beginning to dawn upon me that Triplett was planning a get-away. "My God!" I cried, "take that thing away! What you trying to do, Triplett? Hook us up to civilization with all its deviltry and disease and damned conventions? Don't you appreciate the beauty of getting outside of the covers of a geography?" The old devil only grinned, his very leer seeming to say, "I've got a trump card up my sleeve, young man." What might have been a bitter scene was interrupted by something much more serious. We saw Whinney running along the edge of the lagoon into which he presently plunged and began swimming madly in our direction. As he drew near I saw that he was deathly white. When we dragged him over the rail he collapsed in the scuppers and burst into tears. "What is it?" we questioned. He jerked out his answer in hoarse, broken fragments, while our blood froze. "It's come.... I was afraid of it.... from the first... it's here... we've done it... we've got to get out... it is not fair..." "For heaven's sake," I shouted. "What's here? What have we done?" "Disease!" he panted. "Disease! You know ... how the other islands... Marquesas... Solomons... Tongas... dying, all dying." His voice sank and he covered his face with his hands, shoulders shaking. "What... what is it? Who has it?" It was then that Whinney made the supreme call on his nerve, stiffened visibly and answered in a dead voice, "My wife, Babai-Alova-Babai, has prickly-heat!" It seemed to me in that moment that the entire atoll revolved rapidly in one direction while the mountain twirled in the other. Through my brain crashed a sequence of sickening pictures, the lepers of Molokai with their hideous affliction imported from China, the gaunt, coughing wrecks of Papeete, the scarecrows of Samoa--and now this! And Whinney was right. _We_ had done it; who individually, I know not, nor cared, but collectively we were guilty. Into this Eden, this Paradise in which I had never seen or heard of the slightest ailment, we, the prideful whites, had brought this deadly thing! Should we remain, I dared not face the consequences. "Is it... bad?" I managed to ask. "Pretty," moaned poor Whinney. "Left knee, small of back... spreading." "I'm going home," I said. "We'll meet here tomorrow afternoon at the same tune. If this thing develops" ... I finished my sentence by diving overboard. Early next morning I knew the worst. Daughter of Pearl and Coral was restless during the night. When the sun rose a single glance at her polished shoulders and my heart broke, never to be repaired. Folding her gently in my arms, I trembled in a paroxysm of grief.