"He has four good men, a little box o' drugs, and a case o' dynamite. Farquhar's going on to Australia with mining stores, and he gave it him."
It seemed absurdly insufficient, and Jacinta struggled with an almost hysterical inclination to laugh. It was, she realised, a very big thing Austin had undertaken, and his equipment consisted of a case of dynamite and a box of drugs, which, on his own confession, he knew very little about. Still, she saw that Macallister, who, she fancied, ought to know, rated manhood far higher than material. It was Muriel who broke the silence.
"But they will want a doctor," she said, with a little tremour in her voice.
Macallister shook his head. "Ye would not get one to go there for £500, and he would be no use if he did," he said. "Ye will remember that malaria fever does not stay on one long. It goes away when it has shaken the strength out o' ye—and now and then comes back again—while by the time Austin gets there Mr. Jefferson will be——"
He stopped with some abruptness, but though she shivered, Muriel looked at him with steady eyes.
"Ah!" she said, "you mean he will either be better, or that no doctor could cure him then?"
Macallister made her a little inclination, and it was done with a grave deference that Jacinta had scarcely expected from him.
"Just that," he said. "I'm thinking ye are one of the women a man can tell the truth to. It is a pity there are not more o' them. It is no a healthy country Mr. Austin is going to, but I have been five years on the coast o' it, and ye see me here."
"I wonder," said Jacinta, "whether you, who know all about ships and engines, did not feel tempted to go with Mr. Austin?"
The engineer smiled curiously. "Tempted!" he said. "It was like trying to be teetotal with a whisky bottle in the rack above one's bunk; but I am a married man, with a wife who has a weakness for buying dining-room suites."