Gold Out of Celebes

by Aylward Edward Dingle

"Say, Barry; what did you dream about?" he cried, rubbing his eyes furiously as if to clear cobwebs from his brain. "Did you have any dope in your physic?"

"I don't know," growled the skipper. "I know I saw Vandersee here, the moment I woke up, with some sailors, and they tell me I dreamed it!"

"Oh, then, it's all right," replied Little carelessly. "You must have had the same dope. I dreamed they were here just as I dropped off to sleep. Was Gordon with you, too?"

"He was, and he was no dream!"

"That's right, too. He gave me some dope that made me sleep like an infant. I suppose it's the poison of those ants that makes us imagine creepy things."

"By Godfrey, I don't imagine anything!" cried Barry, and he tore down his curtains and leaped to the floor. "I'm going to dress and put an end to this Hobson-Jobson flummery!" He tottered, clawed wildly at the air, and pitched headlong beside Little's cot.

"There! It's the poison," moaned Little, squirming out of his bed and trying to lift his friend up. Then his own world spun around him, and he fell beside Barry, every inch of ant-bitten skin a blazing patch of torture.

Mrs. Goring and Natalie, entering together five minutes later, found them there; and all the good already accomplished had to be done over. It was two days now before the patients were able to recognize their nurses; but when recognition came, at least one of the women sighed thankfully to notice that Barry no longer harped upon naval officers and Vandersee. His relapse seemed to have driven all earlier ideas from his head; his bodily weakness was so intense that Mrs. Goring found him a babe in her hands, and Natalie could scarcely tend him for the weakness that attacked her at sight of him.

But the day came when he and Little were permitted to walk, and then the stockade formed their promenade ground. With a nurse for each, their convalescence could have been no more agreeable in the midst of civilization. And as Barry gained strength, yet before Jerry Rolfe was allowed in to worry him about the ship, he found himself and Natalie, Little and Mrs. Goring, pairing off in their slow rambles, and once more awkwardness of speech descended upon him like a wet blanket. He had caught a suggestive look on Little's face, and an answering smile on Mrs. Goring's, that told him as plainly as words that his opportunity was thus given to him.

So, while his heart burst with sentiment, and his arms ached to take Natalie in them, his tongue declined its office and left him a gaping, speechless sailor. Natalie did not help him either; for as his awkwardness increased, he sensed at first, then saw, that she was consumed with some powerful emotion that certainly was not love for him. Then he surprised her regarding him with fixed attention, when he had turned away to gather a flower for her hair; and in a flash he saw what her emotion was. It was dull, rankling uncertainty, and all the lover fled from him, leaving only the keen sailor with a keen sailor's sense.