"I don't think it would be," and Austin smiled again. "After all, a picture either goes beyond or falls a long way short of the real thing, and the subject's rather too big for me. Man's domination symbolised by a staggering scarecrow with a fireman's shovel."
Jefferson dropped his hand on his shoulder, and gripped it hard. "Well," he said, "you can drive a winch and sling a palm oil puncheon like a sailorman. I guess that's 'most as useful as the other thing, any way."
"Ah!" said Austin, "you're skirting rather a big question, but we are practical now. Are you going to dig the gum up before you heave in cargo?"
"I'm not. It seems to me it's safer where it is in the meanwhile, so long as Funnel-paint doesn't know where to look for it. If you'll give me a dose of quinine I'd be obliged to you."
Austin glanced at him sharply. "Have you any special reason for asking for it?"
"I've been in the rain quite a long while now, and it's a good deal wiser to head off a fever than wriggle out of its clutches once it gets a good grip on you. One gets cautious in this country."
Austin said nothing further, for he was by this time well acquainted with his comrade's characteristics, but he was not quite contented with the latter's reason when he lugged out the medicine chest.
CHAPTER XXVI
JEFFERSON FINDS THE GUM
A half-moon shone in a rift between the massed banks of cloud when Austin stood looking down into the trench four of the Spaniards were digging. It ran partly across the islet, which was small and sandy, intersecting another excavation that had a palm at one end of it, while a half-rotten cottonwood, from which orchids sprang, stood in line with the trench the men were toiling in. They were shovelling strenuously, and the thud of the sand they flung out jarred on the silence, for the night was very still. Austin could hear the creek lapping on the beach, and the deep humming of the Cumbria's pump, softened by the distance. She lay, with a light or two blinking fitfully on board her, half a mile away, ready at last for sea. Then he glanced at Jefferson, who stood close beside him, shivering a little, though the night was hot, as he leaned upon a shovel.