Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/44

   camp—I with a rifle, watchful for game, Vinckers humming to himself an old Dutch tune, careless in the full force of the sunlight, wandering behind me and clicking on the rocks with his little hammer.

"I was strangely lacking in breath as I climbed the hillside; as for Vinckers, he halted at the end of a hundred steps and would go up no further. Back at our camp MacFarlane lay smoking, with his head in the lap of the girl. I alone toiled up the slope, soft in heart and fibre, the sweat pouring from me in streams, sodden, with the spring gone out of my ankles and everything about me of a strange, sickly yellow hue which darkened as my breath came faster.

"I found the Papuans departed, so back I went, blubbering with breathlessness, muttering, fatigued, depressed, sluggish with sleep. yinckers I found with his back against a rock, sleeping heavily. As I bent to rouse him my eyes fell upon a specimen which lay between his knees, and I saw that the little hammer [ 28 ]