"Yeah. I believe it. I been stung more 'n once by females before now. How about the yeller fever? Git that the same way?"
"Same way, only a different mosquito—the stegomyia. When you begin to vomit black you're gone. And if you get beriberi you're gone, too. First symptoms of that are numbness of the fingers and toes. Muscular paralysis goes on until your heart stops."
"Uh-huh. Nice cheerful place to die in, this Ammyzon jungle. Aw well, what's the odds?"
Wherewith he inhaled more coffee, flipped his cigarette butt at a small lizard on the floor not far away, yawned once more, and swaggered out to the piazza, bawling:
"And when I die
Don't bury me a-tall,
But pickle me bones
In alky-hawl—"
When his roar had subsided and the two former officers had sat silent a moment, smiling over his nocturnal adventures, the door of Schwandorf's room opened abruptly and the German stepped out.
"Morgen," he grunted, striding to the table. "Thomaz!"
"Si, Senhor Sssondoff." The youth faded away into the kitchen quarters.
"Always feel grumpy until I eat," grumbled the blackbeard. "None of this coffee-cigarette breakfast for me. A real meal, coffee with gin in it, a cigar—then I feel human. Sleep well?"
His bold gaze never flickered as it encountered Knowlton's.