several times of having taken them. Where are they?"
"I don't know," replied the man from the Four Winds, slowly. "It happened when the fever had a grip on me. I fancy I had an idea—yes, I'm sure I had—that someone was going to take the things. You know what silly notions you get into your head when the malaria is biting you. Now, what in thunder—yes, I left you all on the veranda, to get some quinine, and I've a dreamy sort of recollection of trying to get that wedge out with my nails—"
"Yes, yes," said Chester anxiously. "What did you do then?"
"Trent, I'm damned if I know," the sailor replied frankly. "Maybe it'll come to me, but at present I can't remember another thing about it. I only know I was full of the idea that they were going to be stolen, and I thought I'd get ahead of the thief."
Joan had followed her brother into the room and listened intently to every word.
"You were talking to the ship's doctor after that," she said. "Do you think you gave them to him?"
Keith shook his head.
"No. In the first place he would probably have said something to you about it if I had, and in the
