It was cool and moist.

It no more trembled than his own.
"The Dyaks are far more scared than you," he murmured with a laugh.
"Cruel and courageous as they are, they dare not face a spook." "Then what a pity it is we cannot conjure up a ghost for their benefit! All the spirits I have ever read about were ridiculous.

Why cannot one be useful occasionally ?" The question set him thinking.

Unknown to the girl, the materials for a dramatic apparition were hidden amidst the bushes near the well.

He cudgeled his brains to remember the stage effects of juvenile days; but these needed limelight, blue flares, mirrors, phosphorus.
The absurdity of hoping to devise any such accessories whilst perched on a ledge in a remote island--a larger reef of the thousands in the China Sea--tickled him.
"What is it ?" asked Iris.
He repeated his list of missing stage properties.