"He'd never forgive me," he said. "My dear girl, he'll be as right as a trivet in the morning." She was sceptical, but, to her amazement, Sanders turned up at breakfast his usual self, save that he was a little weary-eyed, and that his hand shook when he raised his coffee-cup to his lips. A miracle, thought Patricia Hamilton, and said so. "Not at all, dear miss," said Bones, now, as ever, accepting full credit for all phenomena she praised, whether natural or supernatural. "This is simply nothin' to what happened to me. Ham, dear old feller, do you remember when I was brought down from the Machengombi River? Simply delirious--ravin'--off my head." "So much so," said Hamilton, slicing the top off his egg, "that we didn't think you were ill." "If you'd seen me," Bones went on, solemnly shaking one skinny forefinger at the girl, "you'd have said: 'Bones is for the High Jump.'" "I should have said nothing so vulgar, Bones," she retorted. "And was it malaria?" "Ah," said Hamilton triumphantly, "I was too much of a gentleman to hint that it wasn't. Press the question, Pat." Bones shrugged his shoulders and cast a look of withering contempt upon his superior. "In the execution of one's duty, dear Miss Patricia H," he said, "the calibre of the gun that lays a fellow low, an' plunges his relations an' creditors into mournin', is beside the point. The only consideration, as dear old Omar says, is-- "'The movin' finger hits, an', havin' hit, Moves on, tum tumty tumty tay, And all a feller does won't make the slightest difference.'" "Is that Omar or Shakespeare?" asked the dazed Hamilton. "Be quiet, dear. What was the illness, Bones?" "Measles," said Hamilton brutally, "and German measles at that." "Viciously put, dear old officer, but, nevertheless, true," said Bones buoyantly. "But when the hut's finished, I'll return good for evil. There's goin' to be a revolution, Miss Patricia Hamilton. No more fever, no more measles--health, wealth, an' wisdom, by gad!" "Sunstroke," diagnosed Hamilton. "Pull yourself together, Bones--you're amongst friends." But Bones was superior to sarcasm. There was a creature of Lieutenant Tibbetts a solemn, brown man, who possessed, in addition to a vocabulary borrowed from a departed professor of bacteriology, a rough working knowledge of the classics. This man's name was, as I have already explained, Abid Ali or Ali Abid, and in him Bones discovered a treasure beyond price. Bones had recently built himself a large square hut near the seashore--that is to say, he had, with the expenditure of a great amount of midnight oil, a pair of compasses, a box of paints, and a T-square, evolved a somewhat complicated plan whereon certain blue oblongs stood for windows, and certain red cones indicated doors. To this he had added an elevation in the severe Georgian style.