"I'm glad you didn't live to
see it, old man. What a cropper, what a cropper!"
Between squalls the _Flibberty-Gibbet_ ran in to anchorage, and her
skipper, Pete Oleson (brother to the Oleson of the _Jessie_), ancient,
grizzled, wild-eyed, emaciated by fever, dragged his weary frame up the
veranda steps and collapsed in a steamer-chair. Whisky and soda kept him
going while he made report and turned in his accounts.
"You're rotten with fever," Sheldon said. "Why don't you run down to
Sydney for a blow of decent climate?"
The old skipper shook his head.
"I can't. I've ben in the islands too long. I'd die. The fever comes
out worse down there."
"Kill or cure," Sheldon counselled.
"It's straight kill for me. I tried it three years ago. The cool
weather put me on my back before I landed. They carried me ashore and
into hospital. I was unconscious one stretch for two weeks. After that
the doctors sent me back to the islands--said it was the only thing that
would save me. Well, I'm still alive; but I'm too soaked with fever. A
month in Australia would finish me."
"But what are you going to do?" Sheldon queried. "You can't stay here
until you die."
"That's all that's left to me. I'd like to go back to the old country,
but I couldn't stand it.
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