at either side and over and under the frame of boards. Of one accord
they dropped beside their patient.

She was trembling violently; they heard the light, continuous
chattering of her teeth. After her many hours under the merciless sun,
this sudden change of temperature might bring on the fever against
which they could not fight. They stripped off their shirts and wound
them carefully around her shivering body. McTee lifted her in his arms
and sat down with his back to the wind. Harrigan took a place beside
him, and they caught her close. They seemed to be striving by the force
of their will to drive the heat from their own blood into her trembling
body. But still she moaned in her delirium, and the shivering would not
stop.

Then the great idea came to Harrigan. He rose without a word and ran
out into the rain to a fallen tree which must have been blown down
years before, for now the trunk and the splintered stump were rotten to
the core. He had noticed it that day. There was only a rim of firm wood
left of the wreck. The stump gave readily enough under his pull. He
ripped away long strips of the casing, bark and wood, and carried it
back to the shelter. He made a second trip to secure a great armful of
the powder-dry time-rotted core of the stump.

His third expedition carried him a little farther afield to a small
sapling which he could barely make out through the night. He bent down
the top of the little tree and snapped off about five feet of its
length. This in turn he brought to the shelter. He stopped short here,
frozen with amazement. The girl was raving in her delirium, and to
soothe her, McTee was singing to her horrible sailor chanteys, pieced
out with improvised and foolish words.