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Rh improving now, but we nearly had to drop him overboard at first."

Steel smiled.

"As a matter of fact, Miss Trent," he explained. "I'd have been dead in a very short while if they hadn't turned up in their two-by-four little box of rattles, because a thing called gangrene had started, and the skipper of the tramp was seriously proposing an operation on me with the butcher's saw as there was nothing else handy. Pills, here, wanted to take all my farewell messages when he first saw it, as he said he wouldn't give a whoop in—I mean a tinker's cuss for my chance. But that was his little joke. He must have his joke. So I fooled him by getting well again, and he can't bring himself to be polite to me now except in moments of forgetfulness."

"Floating about in a tramp steamer off the Solomons is a most unfortunate time to break an arm. How did you happen to be there?" asked Chester, his interest aroused:

"Looking for trouble," said Steel. "I've spent the last six months hunting everywhere from Singapore to Fiji for a good investment in a plantation, but I haven't found one. Either they're rotten, and the owners are almost willing to give 'em away, or they're reasonably good and the owners want ten years' profits, all rolled into one, paid in the purchase price."