"I, too, write books," he announced.
Aha, thought I, now at last is he going to pester me with his
literary efforts. My soul was in revolt. I had not come all the
way to the South Seas to be a literary bureau.
"This is the book I write," he explained, smashing himself a
resounding blow on the chest with his clenched fist. "The gorilla
in the African jungle pounds his chest till the noise of it can be
heard half a mile away."
"A pretty good chest," quoth I, admiringly; "it would even make a
gorilla envious."
And then, and later, I learned the details of the marvellous book
Ernest Darling had written. Twelve years ago he lay close to death.
He weighed but ninety pounds, and was too weak to speak. The
doctors had given him up. His father, a practising physician, had
given him up. Consultations with other physicians had been held
upon him. There was no hope for him. Overstudy (as a school-
teacher and as a university student) and two successive attacks of
pneumonia were responsible for his breakdown. Day by day he was
losing strength. He could extract no nutrition from the heavy foods
they gave him; nor could pellets and powders help his stomach to do
the work of digestion.
