from Balatta, who grew more persecutingly and perilously loverly as
the Southern Cross rode higher in the sky and marked the imminence
of her nuptials. His days Bassett spent in a hammock swung under
the shade of the great breadfruit tree before the devil-devil
house. There were breaks in this programme, when, in the comas of
his devastating fever-attacks, he lay for days and nights in the
house of heads. Ever he struggled to combat the fever, to live, to
continue to live, to grow strong and stronger against the day when
he would be strong enough to dare the grass-lands and the belted
jungle beyond, and win to the beach, and to some labour-recruiting,
black-birding ketch or schooner, and on to civilization and the men
of civilization, to whom he could give news of the message from
other worlds that lay, darkly worshipped by beastmen, in the black
heart of Guadalcanal's midmost centre.

On the other nights, lying late under the breadfruit tree, Bassett
spent long hours watching the slow setting of the western stars
beyond the black wall of jungle where it had been thrust back by
the clearing for the village. Possessed of more than a cursory
knowledge of astronomy, he took a sick man's pleasure in
speculating as to the dwellers on the unseen worlds of those
incredibly remote suns, to haunt whose houses of light, life came
forth, a shy visitant, from the rayless crypts of matter. He could
no more apprehend limits to time than bounds to space. No
subversive radium speculations had shaken his steady scientific
faith in the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of
matter. Always and forever must there have been stars. And
surely, in that cosmic ferment, all must be comparatively alike,
comparatively of the same substance, or substances, save for the
freaks of the ferment. All must obey, or compose, the same laws