For a couple of days, Stuart wandered about New York, partly sight-seeing and partly on assignments in company with some of the reporters of the paper. The City Editor wanted to determine whether the boy had any natural aptitude for newspaper work. So Stuart chased around one day with the man on the "police court run," another day he did "hotels" and scored by securing an interview with a noted visitor for whom the regular reporter had not time to wait. The boy was too young, of course, to be sent on any assignments by himself, but one of the older men took a fancy to the lad and took him along a couple of times, when on a big story.

Just a week later, on coming in to the office, Stuart was told that the Managing Editor wanted to see him. As this was the summons for which he had been waiting, Stuart obeyed with alacrity. The Managing Editor did not motion him to a a chair, as before, so the boy stood.

"First of all, Garfield——" and the boy noticed the use of the surname—"I want to tell you that your father is safe. We've been keeping the wires hot to Port-au-Prince and have found out that some one resembling the description you gave me of your father commandeered a sailing skiff at a small place near Jacamel and set off westward. Two days afterward, he landed at Guantanamo and registered at a hotel as 'James Garfield.' He stayed there two days and then took the train for Havana. So you don't need to worry over that, any more."

"Thank you, sir," answered the boy, relieved, "I'm mighty glad to know."

"Now," continued the Editor, "let us return to this question for which we brought you here. According to your story, you heard the conspirators say that their plans would be ready for fulfillment next spring."

"Yes, sir," the boy agreed, "Leborge said that."

"Good. Then there is no immediate need of pressing the case too closely. It will be better to let the plans mature a little. A mere plot doesn't mean much. News value comes in action. When something actually happens, then, knowing what lies behind it, the story becomes big.

"What we really want to find out is whether this plot—as it seems to be—is just a matter between two or three men, or if it is widely spread over all the islands of the West Indies. You're too young, as yet, for anything like regular newspaper work, but the fact that you're not much more than a youngster might be turned to advantage. No one would suspect that you were in quest of political information.

"So I'm going to suggest that you make a fairly complete tour of the islands, this fall and early winter, just as if you were idling around, apparently, but, at the same time, keeping your ears and your eyes open. In order to give color to your roamings, you can write us some articles on 'Social Life and the Color Line in the West Indies' as you happen to see it. First-hand impressions are always valuable, and, perhaps, the fact that you see them through a boy's eyes may give them a certain novelty and freshness. Of course, the articles will probably have to be rewritten in the office. By keeping a copy of the stuff you send, and comparing it with the way the articles appear in the paper, you'll get a fair training.

"We'll probably handle these in the Sunday Edition, and I'm going to turn you over to the Sunday Editor, to whom you'll report, in future."

He nodded pleasantly to the boy in token of dismissal.

"I wish you luck on your trip," he said, "and see that you send us in the right kind of stuff!"

Stuart thanked him heartily for his kindness, and went out, sorry that he was not going to deal with the Chief himself.

The Sunday Editor's office was a welter of confusion. As Stuart was to find out, in the years to come when he should really be a newspaper man, the Sunday Editor's job is a hard one. It is much sought, since it is day work rather than night work, but it is a wearing task. The Sunday Editor must have all the qualities of a magazine man and a newspaper man at the same time. He must also have the creative faculty.

In such departments of a modern newspaper as the City, Telegraph, Sporting, Financial, etc., the work of the reporters and editors is to chronicle and present the actual news. If nothing of vital interest has happened during the day, that is not their fault. Their work is done when the news is as well covered and as graphically told as possible.

There are no such limits in the Sunday Editor's office. He must create interest, provoke sensation, and build the various extra sections of the Sunday issue into a paper of such vital importance that every different kind of reader will find something to hold his attention. He has all the world to choose from, but he has also all the world to please. The work, too, must be done at high pressure, for the columns of a Sunday issue to be filled are scores in number, and the Sunday staff of any paper—even the biggest—is but small.

Fergus, the Sunday Editor, was a rollicking Irishman, with red hair and a tongue hung in the middle. He talked, as his ancestors fought, all in a hurry. He was a whirlwind for praise, but a tornado for blame. His organizing capacity was marvelous, and his men liked and respected him, for they knew well that he could write rings around any one of them, in a pinch. He began as the boy entered the door,

"Ye're Stuart Garfield, eh? Ye don't look more'n about a half-pint of a man. Does the Chief think I'm startin' a kindergarten? Not that I give a hang whether ye're two or eighty-two so long as ye can write. Ye'll go first to Barbados. Steamer sails tomorrow at eight in the morning. Here's your berth. Here's a note to the cashier. Letter of instructions following. Wait at the Crown Hotel, Bridgetown, till you get it. Don't write if ye haven't anything to say. Get a story across by every mail-boat. If ye send me rot, I'll skin ye. Good luck!"

And he turned to glance over his shoulder at a copy-boy who had come in with a handful of slips, proofs and the thousand matters of the editor's daily grind.

Stuart waited two or three minutes, expecting Fergus to continue, but the Sunday Editor seemed to have forgotten his existence.

"Well, then, good-by, Mr. Fergus," said the boy, hesitatingly.

"Oh, eh? Are ye there still? Sure. Good-by, boy, good-by an' good luck to ye!"

And plunged back into his work.

There seemed nothing else for Stuart to do but to go out of the office. In the hall outside, he paused and wondered. He held in his hand the two slips of paper that Fergus had given him, and he stared down at these with bewilderment. Fergus' volley of speech, had taken him clean off his balance.

There was no doubt about the reality of these two slips of paper. One was the ticket for his berth and the other had the figures "$250" scrawled across a printed form made out to the Cashier, and it was signed "Rick Fergus."

In his uncertainty what he ought to do, Stuart went into the City Room and hunted up his friend the reporter. To him he put the causes of his confusion. The old newspaper man smiled.

"That's Rick Fergus, all over," he said. "Good thing you didn't ask him any questions! He'd have taken your head off at one bite. He's right, after all. If a reporter's any good at all, he knows himself what to do. A New York paper isn't fooling around with amateurs, generally. But, under the circumstances, I think Rick might have told you something. Let's see. How about your passport?"

"I've got one," said Stuart, "I had to have one, coming up from Cuba."

"If you're going to Barbados, you'll have to have it visÉed by the British Consul."

"But that will take a week, maybe, and I've got to sail tomorrow!"

"Is that all your trouble?"

He stepped to the telephone.

"Consulate? Yes? New York Planet speaking. One of our men's got to chase down to Barbados on a story. Sending him round this afternoon. Will you be so good as to visÉ him through? Ever so much obliged; thanks!"

He put up the receiver and turned to the boy.

"Easy as easy, you see," he said. "The name of a big paper like this one will take you anywhere, if you use it right. Now, let's see. You'll want to go and see the Cashier. Come on down, I'll introduce you."

A word or two at the Cashier's window, and the bills for $250 were shoved across to Stuart, who pocketed them nervously. He had never seen so much money before.

"Next," said the reporter, "you'd better get hold of some copy-paper, a bunch of letter-heads and envelopes. Also some Expense Account blanks. Stop in at one of these small printing shops and have some cards printed with your name and that of the paper—here, like mine!" And he pulled out a card from his card case and gave it to the boy for a model.

Stuart was doing his best to keep up with this rapid change in his fortunes, but, despite himself, his eyes looked a bit wild. His friend the reporter saw it, and tapped him on the back.

"You haven't got any time to lose," he said. "Oh, yes, there's another thing, too. Can you handle a typewriter?"

"No," answered the boy, "at least, I never tried."

"Then you take my tip and spend some of that $250 on a portable machine and learn to handle it, on the way down to Barbados. You'll have to send all your stuff typewritten, you know. Imagine Fergus getting a screed from a staff man in longhand!"

The reporter chuckled at the thought.

"Why, I believe the old red-head would take a trip down to the West Indies just to have a chance of saying what he thought. Or, if he couldn't go, he'd blow up, and we'd be out a mighty good Sunday Editor. No, son, you've got to learn to tickle a typewriter!"

They had not been wasting time during this talk, for the reporter had taken out of his own desk the paper, letter-heads, expense account blanks and the rest and handed them over to the boy, explaining that he could easily replenish his own supply.

"Now," he suggested, "make tracks for the consulate. Stop at a printer's on your way and order some cards. Then chase back and buy yourself a portable typewriter. And, if I were you, I'd start learning it, right tonight. Then, hey! Off for the West Indies again, eh?"

"But don't I go and say good-by to the City Editor, or the Managing Editor, or anyone?"

"What for? You've got your berth, you've got your money, you're going to get your passport, and you've got your assignment. Nothing more for you to do, Son, except to get down there and deliver the goods."

He led the way out of the office and to the elevator. On reaching the street, he turned to the boy.

"There's one thing," he said, "that may help you, seeing that you're new to the work. When you get down to Barbados, drop into the office of the biggest paper there. Chum up with the boys. They'll see that you're a youngster, and they'll help you all they can. You'll find newspaper men pretty clannish, the world over. Well, good-bye, Garfield, I won't be likely to see you again before you go. I've got that Traction Swindle to cover and there's going to be a night hearing."

The boy shook hands with real emotion.

"You've been mighty good to me," he said, "it's made all the difference to my stay in New York."

"Oh! That's all right!" came the hearty reply. "Well—good luck!"

He turned down the busy street and, in a moment, was lost in the crowd.

For a moment Stuart felt a twinge of loneliness, but the afternoon was short, and he had a great deal to do. It was only by hurrying that he was able to get done all the various things that had been suggested. Despite his rush, however, the boy took time to send a cable to his father, telling of his own safety, for he had no means of knowing whether or not his father might be worrying over him also. He worked until midnight learning the principles of the typewriter and, in a poky sort of way, trying to hammer out the guide sentences given him in the Instruction Book. Next day found him again at sea.

In contrast with the riotous vegetation of the jungles of Haiti and the tropical forests of Eastern Cuba, Stuart found the country around Bridgetown, the sole harbor of Barbados, surprisingly unattractive. The city itself was active and bustling, but dirty, dusty and mean. On the other hand, the suburbs, with villas occupied by the white residents, were remarkable for their marvelous gardens.

On the outskirts of the town, and all over the island, in rows or straggling clumps which seemed to have been dropped down anywhere, Stuart saw the closely clustered huts of the negroes. These were tiny huts of pewter-gray wood, raised from the ground on a few rough stones and covered by a roof of dark shingles. They were as simple as the houses a child draws on his slate—things of two rooms, with two windows and one door. The windows had sun shutters in place of glass and there were no chimneys, for the negro housewives do their cooking out of doors in the cool of the evening. The boy noticed that, by dark, all these windows and doors were closed tightly, for the Barbadian negro sleeps in an air-tight room. He does this, ostensibly, to keep out ten-inch-long centipedes, and bats, but, in reality, to keep out "jumbies" and ghosts, of which he is much more afraid.

The greater part of the island seemed, to the boy, utterly unlike any place he had seen in the tropics. Around Bridgetown, and over two-thirds of the island of Barbados, there is hardly a tree. The ground rises in slow undulations, marked, like a checker-board, with sugar-cane fields. No place could seem more lacking in opportunity for adventures, yet Stuart was to learn to the contrary before long.

Acting upon the advice given him by his friend the reporter, in New York, just before leaving, Stuart seized the first opportunity to make himself known to the newspaper men of Bridgetown. He was warmly received, even welcomed, and was amazed at the ready hospitality shown him. Moreover, when he stated that he was there to do some article on "Social Life and the Color Question" for the New York Planet, he found that he had struck a subject on which anyone and everyone he met was willing to talk—as the Managing Editor no doubt had anticipated when he suggested the series to the boy.

In one respect—as almost everyone he interviewed pointed out—Barbados differs from every other of the West India Islands. It is densely populated, so densely, indeed, that there is not a piece of land suitable for cultivation which is not employed. The great ambition of the Barbadian is to own land. The spirit of loyalty to the island is incredibly strong.

This dense population and intensive cultivation has made the struggle for existence keen in Barbados. A job is a prize. This has made the Barbadian negro a race apart, hardworking and frugal. Until the building of the Panama Canal, few negroes left their island home. With the help of his newspaper friends, Stuart was able to send to his paper a fairly well-written article on the Barbadian negro. The boy was wise enough to take advice from his new friends how best to write the screed.

Moreover, he learned that there was also, on the island, a very unusual and most interesting colony of "poor whites," the descendants of English convicts who had been brought to the island in the seventeenth century. These were not criminals, but political prisoners who had fought in Monmouth's Rebellion. Pitied by the planters, despised even by the negro slaves, this small colony held itself aloof, starved, and married none but members of their own colony. They are now mere shadows of men, with puny bodies and witless minds, living in brush or wooden hovels and eating nothing but a little wild fruit and fish.

Their story made another good article for Stuart's paper, and he spent almost an entire day holding such conversation with them as he could, though their English language had so far degenerated that the boy found it hard to understand.

The colony is not far from the little village of Bathsheba, which Stuart had reached by the tramway that crosses the island. The returning tram was not due to start for a couple of hours, and so, idly, Stuart strolled southward along the beach, which, at that point, is fringed with curiously shaped rocks, forming curving bays shaded with thickets of trees which curve down to the shore. Some of these were modest-looking trees, something like apple-trees but with a longer, thinner leaf. They bore a fruit like a green apple.

The boy, tired from his walk along the soft white sand, threw himself down negligently beneath the trees, in the shade, and, finding one of the fruits fallen, close to his hand, picked it up and half decided to eat it. An inner warning bade him pause.

The day had been hot and the shade was inviting. A sour and yet not unpleasant odor was in the air. It made him sleepy, or, to speak more correctly, it made his limbs heavy, while a certain exhilaration of spirits lulled him into a false content. Soon, under these trees, on the beach near Bathsheba, Stuart passed into a languorous waking dream.

And the red land-crabs, on their stilt-like legs, crept nearer and nearer.

An hour later, one of the Barbadian negroes, coming home from his work, was met at the door of his cabin by his wife, her eyes wide with alarm.

"White pickney go along Terror Cove. No come um back."

"Fo' de sake!" came the astonished exclamation. "Best hop along, see!"

The burly negro, well-built like all his fellows, struck out along the beach. He talked to himself and shook his frizzled head as he went. His pace, which was distinctly that of hurry, betokened his disturbed mind.

"Pickney go alone here, by golly!" he declared as he traced the prints of a booted foot on the white sand and saw that they led only in one direction. "No come back! Dem debbil-trees, get um!"

He turned the corner and paused a minute at the extraordinary sight presented.

In the curve of the cove, dancing about with high, measured steps, like that of a trained carriage-horse, was the boy, his hands clutching a stout stick with which he was beating the air around him as though fighting some imaginary foe, in desperation for his life. The sand around his feet was spotted, as though with gouts of blood, by the ruddy land-crabs, and, from every direction, these repulsive carrion eaters were hastening to their prey.

They formed a horrible alliance—the "debbil-trees" and the blood-red land-crabs!

The negro broke into a run. The old instinct of the black to serve the white rose in him strongly, though his own blood ran cold as he came near the "debbil-trees."

The crabs were swarming all about the boy. Some of the most daring were clawing their way up his trousers, but Stuart seemed to have no eyes for them. With jerky strokes, as though his arms were worked by a string, he struck and slashed at the air at some imaginary enemy about the height of his waist.

As his rescuer came nearer, he could hear the boy screaming, a harsh, inhuman scream of rage and fear and madness combined. Jerky words amid the screams told of his terrors,

"They're eating me! Their claws are all around! Their eyes! Their eyes!"

But still the strokes were directed wildly at the air, and never a blow fell on the little red horrors at his feet.

"Ol' Doc, he say debbil-tree make um act that way," muttered the negro, as he ran, "pickney he think um crabs big as a mule!"

Stuart, fighting for his life with what his tortured imagination conceived to be gigantic monsters, saw, coming along the beach, the semblance of an ogre. The pupils of his eyes, contracted by the poison to mere pin-pricks, magnified enormously, and the negro took on the proportions of a giant.

But Stuart was a fighter. He would not run. He turned upon his new foe.

The negro, reckoning nothing of one smart blow from the stick, threw his muscular arms about the boy, held him as in a vice, and picking him up, carried him off as if he were a baby. The boy struggled and screamed but it availed him nothing.

"Pickney, he mad um sartain," announced the negro, as he strode by his own hut, "get him Ol' Doc good'n quick!"

Half walking and half running, but carrying his burden with ease, the negro hurried to a well-built house, on a height of land half a mile back from the coast. The house was surrounded by a well-kept garden, but the negro kicked the gate open without ceremony, and, still running, rushed into the house, calling,

"Mister Ol' Doc! Mister Ol' Doc!"

At his cries, one of the doors into the hall opened, and a keen-eyed man, much withered, and with a scraggly gray beard, came out. The negro did not wait for him to speak.

"Mister Ol' Doc," he said, "this pickney down by de debbil-trees, they got um sartain. You potion um quick!"

The doctor stepped aside from the door.

"Put him in there, Mark!" he directed. "Hold him, I'll be back in a minute!"

The negro threw Stuart on a cot and held him down, an easy task, now, for the boy's strength was ebbing fast.

The doctor was back in a moment, with a small phial. He dropped a few drops into the boy's mouth, then, stripping him, put an open box of ointment between himself and the negro.

"Now, Mark," he said, "rub that stuff into his body. Don't be afraid of it. Go after him as if you were grooming a horse. Put some elbow-grease into it. The ointment has got to soak in, and the skin has got to be kept warm. See, he's getting cold, now!"

The negro suited the action to the word. He rubbed with all his strength, and the ointment, concocted from some pungent herb, reddened the skin where it went in. But, a moment or two after, the redness disappeared and the bluish look of cold returned.

"Faster and harder!" cried the old doctor.

Sweat poured down from the negro's face. He ripped off jacket and shirt, and, bare to the waist, scrubbed at the boy's skin. And, if ever he stopped a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, the doctor cried,

"Faster and harder!"

Little by little, the reddening of the skin lasted longer, little by little the bluish tints began to go, little by little the stiffening which had begun, relaxed.

"He's coming round," cried the doctor. "Harder, now! Put your back into it, Mark!"

Nearly an hour had passed when the negro, exhausted and trembling from his exertions, sank into a chair. The doctor eyed him keenly, gave him a stiff dose from a medicine glass, and returned to his patient.

"He'll do now," he said. "In half an hour he'll feel as well as ever, and by tomorrow he'll be terribly ill."

"For de sake, Mister Ol' Doc, I got to rub um tomorrow?" pleaded the negro.

"No, not tomorrow. From now on, I've got to 'potion um,' as you put it."

He put his hand in his pocket.

"Here, Mark," he said, "is half a sovereign. That isn't for saving the boy's life, you understand, for you'd have done that any way, but for working on him as you have."

The negro pocketed the coin with a wide smile, but lingered.

"I want to see um come 'round," he explained.

As the doctor had forecast, in half an hour's time, the color flowed back into Stuart's cheeks, his breathing became normal, and, presently, he stirred and looked around.

"What—What——" he began, bewildered.

"You went to sleep under the shade of some poison-trees, manchineel trees, we call them here," the doctor explained. "Did you eat any of the fruit?"

"I—I don't know," replied Stuart, trying to remember. "I—I sort of went to sleep, that is, my body seemed to and my head didn't. And then I saw crabs coming. At first they were only small ones, then bigger ones came, and bigger, and bigger——"

He shivered and hid his face at the remembrance.

"There was nothing there except the regular red land-crabs," said the doctor, "maybe eighteen inches across, but with a body the size of your hand. Their exaggeration of size was a delirium due to poisoning."

"And the big, black ogre?"

"Was our friend Mark, here," explained the doctor, "who rescued you, first, and has saved your life by working over you, here."

Stuart held out his hand, feebly.

"I didn't know there were any trees which hurt you unless you touched them," he said.

"Plenty of them," answered the scientist. "There are over a hundred plants which give off smells or vapors which are injurious either to man or animals. Some are used by savages for arrow poisons, others for fish poisons, and some we use for medicinal drugs. Dixon records a 'gas-tree' in Africa, the essential oil of which contains chlorine and the smell of which is like the poison-gas used in the World War. And poison-ivy, in the United States, will poison some people even if they only pass close to it."

"Jes' how does a tree make a smell, Mister Ol' Doc?" queried Mark.

"That's hard to explain to you," answered the scientist, turning to the negro. "But every plant has some kind of a smell, that is, all of them have essential oils which volatilize in the air. Some, like the bay, have these oil-sacs in the leaves, some, like cinnamon, in the bark, and so on. The smell of flowers comes the same way."

"An' there is mo' kinds of debbil-trees 'an them on Terror Cove?"

"Plenty more kinds," was the answer, "though few of them are as deadly. These are famous. Lord Nelson, when a young man here in Barbados, was made very ill by drinking from a pool into which some branches of the manchineel had been thrown. In fact, he never really got over it."

"How about me, Doctor?" enquired Stuart. His face was flushing and its was evident that the semi-paralysis of the first infection was passing into a fever stage.

"It all depends whether you ate any of the fruit or not," the doctor answered. "If you didn't, you're safe. But you seem to have spent an hour in that poison-tree grove, and that gives the 'devil-trees,' as Mark calls them, plenty of time to get in their deadly work. You'll come out of it, all right, but you'll have to fight for it!"