an hour, he closed his eyes and fell asleep with Balatta brushing
the flies from him.

When he awoke it was night, and she was gone. But he was aware of
renewed strength, and, by then too thoroughly inoculated by the
mosquito poison to suffer further inflammation, he closed his eyes
and slept an unbroken stretch till sun-up. A little later Balatta
had returned, bringing with her a half-dozen women who, unbeautiful
as they were, were patently not so unbeautiful as she. She
evidenced by her conduct that she considered him her find, her
property, and the pride she took in showing him off would have been
ludicrous had his situation not been so desperate.

Later, after what had been to him a terrible journey of miles, when
he collapsed in front of the devil-devil house in the shadow of the
breadfruit tree, she had shown very lively ideas on the matter of
retaining possession of him. Ngurn, whom Bassett was to know
afterward as the devil-devil doctor, priest, or medicine man of the
village, had wanted his head. Others of the grinning and
chattering monkey-men, all as stark of clothes and bestial of
appearance as Balatta, had wanted his body for the roasting oven.
At that time he had not understood their language, if by LANGUAGE
might be dignified the uncouth sounds they made to represent ideas.
But Bassett had thoroughly understood the matter of debate,
especially when the men pressed and prodded and felt of the flesh
of him as if he were so much commodity in a butcher's stall.

Balatta had been losing the debate rapidly, when the accident
happened. One of the men, curiously examining Bassett's shot-gun,
managed to cock and pull a trigger. The recoil of the butt into