Manchurian Books

Oddly enough, I found that he knew me, or rather my work. He had
bought, it appeared, my volume upon the peculiar vegetation whose
habitat is disintegrating lava rock and volcanic ash, that I had
entitled, somewhat loosely, I could now perceive, Flora of the
Craters. For he explained naively that he had picked it up, thinking
it an entirely different sort of a book, a novel in fact--something
like Meredith's Diana of the Crossways, which he liked greatly.
He had hardly finished this explanation when we touched the side of
the Suwarna, and I was forced to curb my curiosity until we reached
the deck.
"That thing you saw me sitting on," he said, after he had thanked the
bowing little skipper for his rescue, "was all that was left of one of
his Majesty's best little hydroairplanes after that cyclone threw it
off as excess baggage. And by the way, about where are we?"
Da Costa gave him our approximate position from the noon reckoning.
O'Keefe whistled. "A good three hundred miles from where I left the
H.


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