2 THE LAW OF HEMLOCK MOUNTAIN
commander and the surgeon none there held higher
grade than a captaincy.  This jungle-hot weather
made men irresponsible.
  One or two of the faces were excitedly flushed; sev-
eral others were morosely dark. The lights guttered
with a jaundiced yellow and sweat beaded the temples
of the players. Sweat, too, made slippery the enameled
surfaces of the pasteboards. Sweat seemed to ooze
and simmer in their brains like the oil from overheated
asphalt.
  These men had been forced into a companionship
of monotony in a climate of unhealth until their
studied politeness, even their forced jocularity was
rather the effort of toleration than the easy play of
comradeship. Their arduously wooed excitement of
draw-poker, which had run improvidently out of
bounds, was not a pleasure so much as an expedient
against the boredom that had rubbed their tempers
threadbare and put an edgy sharpness on their nerves.
  Captain Comyn, upon whose call for cards the
dealer now waited, was thinking of Private Grant out
there under guard in the improvised hospital. The
islands had "gotten to" Private Grant and "locoed"
him, and he had breathed sulphurous maledictions
against Captain Comyn's life but it was not those
threats that now disturbed the company commander.
  Of late Captain Comyn had been lying awake at
night and wondering if he, too, were not going the
same way as the unfortunate file. Horribly quiet fears
had been stealing poisonously into his mind-a mind
not given to timidities-and the word "melancholia"
had assumed for him a morbid and irresistible com-
pulsion. No one save the captain's self knew of these