For Jacinta by Harold Bindloss

It was fifteen days after he boarded the steamer when Austin reached Las Palmas in a condition which, at least, prevented him chafing at the delay as he otherwise would have done. On the second day something went wrong with the high-pressure engine, and the little, deep-loaded vessel lay rolling idly athwart the swell, while her engineers dismantled and re-erected it. Then the trouble they had already had with the condenser became more acute, so that they would scarcely keep a vacuum, and it also happened that the trade-breeze she had to steam against blew unusually fresh that season.

Austin, however, was not aware of this at the time. He lay rambling incoherently for several days, and when at last his senses came back to him, found himself too weak and listless to trouble about anything. He gained strength rapidly, for the swamp fever does not, as a rule, keep its victim prostrate long. It either kills him without loss of time, or allows him to escape for a season; but its effect is frequently mental as well as physical, and Austin's listlessness remained. He had borne a heavy strain, and when he went ashore at Las Palmas the inevitable reaction was intensified by the black dejection the fever had left behind. It seemed to him that he and Jefferson were only wasting their efforts, and though he still meant to go on with them, he expected no result, since he now felt that there was not the slightest probability of their ever getting the _Cumbria_ off.