Time goes out of whack for a while. Later, he realizes he has been here for a while now, because his broken forefinger is now solid and gnarled, and the abrasions that he got from the coral head are now a field of fine, parallel scars, like the grain in a piece of wood. His skin is covered with mud and he smells of coconut oil and of the smoke that they fill their huts with to chase away the bugs. His life is simple: when malaria has him teetering on the brink of death, he sits in front of a felled palm tree and chips away at it mindlessly for hours, slowly creating a heap of fibrous white stuff that the women use to make starch. When he is feeling stronger, he drags himself over to the river and pans for gold. In return they do what they can to keep New Guinea from killing him. He’s so weak they do not even bother to send a chaperone with him when he goes out.