“It was funny enough, that anxiety about a ship and machinery where there was nothing but monkeys and parrots, but I agreed with him, and we got to work landing those packages of mining gear, which only an expert could understand, in a place where nothing was likely to happen till the Last Day.  The way we sweated over it!  And then warped the stuff with snatch blocks through four miles of jungle.  Yes; and buried two men of our company on the way.  But we did get the cargo on to the company’s damned land at last, and a nice lot of half-naked scarecrows we looked, with nothing to fill our hollow cheeks but whiskers.  There the name of the place was all right, ‘Tres Irmaos,’ painted over a shed.  The shed was falling to pieces.  There was nobody about.  Nothing but a little open space, and the forest around, and the sun blazing down at us.

“We pushed on for headquarters, Purdy leading us.  A hundred miles to go!  I don’t know how we did it.  Three more died, including the mate, but we didn’t bury those.  Purdy kept on the move.  He told me, after an eternity, that it was just ahead of us, and at last we did come to some other men.  They were Colombians.  We astonished them, but nothing could astonish us any more.  Purdy learned that he had got to our ultimate destination all right.  Then some fellow appeared, in a gaudy uniform and a sword, who spoke English.  When Purdy asked to be taken to the manager of the company, this gay chap laughed fiercely, and kept looking at Purdy in triumph.  ‘Him?’ he shouted, when he had got enough fun out of it, ’im?  He’s dead.  We execute him.  All those people—­they go.  No more company.  All finish.  No good.’  He was very bright about it.

“Purdy never said a word.  All he did was to turn to me, and then stare beyond me with big eyes at something which couldn’t possibly have been there.”

VII.  Not in the Almanac

It was an unlucky Friday morning; “and, what’s more,” the chief officer stopped on the gangway to call down to me on the quay, “a black cat crossed my path when I left home this morning, and a very nice black cat it was.”  The gangway was hauled up.  The tugs began to move the big steamer away from us, a process so slow that the daylight between us and the ship increased imperceptibly.

On my way home I paused by the shop which sells such antiques as old spring mattresses, china dogs, portable baths, dumb-bells, and even the kind of bedroom furniture which one would never have supposed was purchasable at second-hand.  But lower, much lower in the shopkeeper’s estimate than even such commodities—­thrown into a bin because they were rubbish, and yet not quite valueless—­was a mass of odd volumes. The First Principles of Algebra, Acts Relating to Pawnbrokers, and Jessica’s First Prayer, were discovered in that order.  The next was Superstitions of the Sea.