"Which reminds one of breakfast. Ching!" shouted our hero. "Breakfast for our party, and slippy with it," he commanded, when the Chinaman had put in an appearance. "I suppose your natives will fend for themselves, George?" "They are almost vegetarians," came the answer, "and each man carries sufficient with him to appease a hearty appetite and to slake his thirst. That's the best of their diet. It supplies food and drink at the same moment. And talking of vegetarians reminds me of myself; you remember I was down with fever?" "And dived overboard when delirious," Jim nodded. "And swam like a maniac till I reached the jungle. Well, I must have raced through it for a couple of miles or more before I came to a stop. At last I dropped down in the very middle of a camp formed by these natives. I was dead beat, raving with fever, and as weak as a child. By all accounts, too, guess I had hardly a shred of clothing left on me, and my skin was torn by brambles. By good luck, anyway, I had stumbled amongst natives who had met white men before, and had no particular dislike for them. In fact, they have an absurdly high idea of them. They treated me like a brother. They looked upon me from the first as if I were a great chief, and fed me with fruits taken in the forest. And it seems that fever is not unknown amongst them. You see, they don't inhabit the swamp lands, so they do not often come in contact with malaria. Guess they ain't acclimatized to fever the same as other natives who live on the lagoons; in consequence they get attacks whenever they come down to the water, and have learned how to treat their patients. I mended slowly. For weeks I couldn't walk, and had to be carried on a form of stretcher; but I shook off the fever. Life became altogether more pleasant, and though, of course, I was longing to get back to settled parts, so as to rejoin you and Sadie, yet, while I was tied by weakness, I admit that I found life pleasant, and kinder hosts I could not have wished for. At last I was about strong enough to travel, and had already arranged for an escort to take me to Colon when this affair turned up. Gee! It's the strangest thing that ever happened. To think that in place of discovering you in New York, or somewhere in the States, you should have run up against me out in this jungle!" They chatted for long over their breakfast, Jim learning every detail of his brother's life, while George gathered a good deal of what had happened at Colon. But from Phineas he heard fuller particulars.