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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Within the Tides, by Joseph Conrad
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Within the Tides
+       Tales
+
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 5, 2011  [eBook #1053]
+[This file was first posted on August 29, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITHIN THE TIDES***
+
+
+Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                                WITHIN THE
+                                  TIDES
+
+
+                                  TALES
+
+    . . . Go, make you ready.
+
+                                                  HAMLET _to the_ PLAYERS.
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                             LONDON & TORONTO
+                          J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
+                        PARIS: J. M. DENT ET. FILS
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+FIRST EDITION       _February_ 1915
+REPRINTED           _April_ 1915; _August_ 1919
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    To
+                       MR. AND MRS. RALPH WEDGWOOD
+
+                THIS SHEAF OF CARE-FREE ANTE-BELLUM PAGES
+               IN GRATITUDE FOR THEIR CHARMING HOSPITALITY
+                        IN THE LAST MONTH OF PEACE
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+                                      PAGE
+THE PLANTER OF MALATA                    3
+THE PARTNER                            119
+THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES             175
+BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS                 223
+
+
+
+THE PLANTER OF MALATA
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In the private editorial office of the principal newspaper in a great
+colonial city two men were talking.  They were both young.  The stouter
+of the two, fair, and with more of an urban look about him, was the
+editor and part-owner of the important newspaper.
+
+The other's name was Renouard.  That he was exercised in his mind about
+something was evident on his fine bronzed face.  He was a lean, lounging,
+active man.  The journalist continued the conversation.
+
+"And so you were dining yesterday at old Dunster's."
+
+He used the word old not in the endearing sense in which it is sometimes
+applied to intimates, but as a matter of sober fact.  The Dunster in
+question was old.  He had been an eminent colonial statesman, but had now
+retired from active politics after a tour in Europe and a lengthy stay in
+England, during which he had had a very good press indeed.  The colony
+was proud of him.
+
+"Yes.  I dined there," said Renouard.  "Young Dunster asked me just as I
+was going out of his office.  It seemed to be like a sudden thought.  And
+yet I can't help suspecting some purpose behind it.  He was very
+pressing.  He swore that his uncle would be very pleased to see me.  Said
+his uncle had mentioned lately that the granting to me of the Malata
+concession was the last act of his official life."
+
+"Very touching.  The old boy sentimentalises over the past now and then."
+
+"I really don't know why I accepted," continued the other.  "Sentiment
+does not move me very easily.  Old Dunster was civil to me of course, but
+he did not even inquire how I was getting on with my silk plants.  Forgot
+there was such a thing probably.  I must say there were more people there
+than I expected to meet.  Quite a big party."
+
+"I was asked," remarked the newspaper man.  "Only I couldn't go.  But
+when did you arrive from Malata?"
+
+"I arrived yesterday at daylight.  I am anchored out there in the
+bay--off Garden Point.  I was in Dunster's office before he had finished
+reading his letters.  Have you ever seen young Dunster reading his
+letters?  I had a glimpse of him through the open door.  He holds the
+paper in both hands, hunches his shoulders up to his ugly ears, and
+brings his long nose and his thick lips on to it like a sucking
+apparatus.  A commercial monster."
+
+"Here we don't consider him a monster," said the newspaper man looking at
+his visitor thoughtfully.
+
+"Probably not.  You are used to see his face and to see other faces.  I
+don't know how it is that, when I come to town, the appearance of the
+people in the street strike me with such force.  They seem so awfully
+expressive."
+
+"And not charming."
+
+"Well--no.  Not as a rule.  The effect is forcible without being clear. . . .
+I know that you think it's because of my solitary manner of life away
+there."
+
+"Yes.  I do think so.  It is demoralising.  You don't see any one for
+months at a stretch.  You're leading an unhealthy life."
+
+The other hardly smiled and murmured the admission that true enough it
+was a good eleven months since he had been in town last.
+
+"You see," insisted the other.  "Solitude works like a sort of poison.
+And then you perceive suggestions in faces--mysterious and forcible, that
+no sound man would be bothered with.  Of course you do."
+
+Geoffrey Renouard did not tell his journalist friend that the suggestions
+of his own face, the face of a friend, bothered him as much as the
+others.  He detected a degrading quality in the touches of age which
+every day adds to a human countenance.  They moved and disturbed him,
+like the signs of a horrible inward travail which was frightfully
+apparent to the fresh eye he had brought from his isolation in Malata,
+where he had settled after five strenuous years of adventure and
+exploration.
+
+"It's a fact," he said, "that when I am at home in Malata I see no one
+consciously.  I take the plantation boys for granted."
+
+"Well, and we here take the people in the streets for granted.  And
+that's sanity."
+
+The visitor said nothing to this for fear of engaging a discussion.  What
+he had come to seek in the editorial office was not controversy, but
+information.  Yet somehow he hesitated to approach the subject.  Solitary
+life makes a man reticent in respect of anything in the nature of gossip,
+which those to whom chatting about their kind is an everyday exercise
+regard as the commonest use of speech.
+
+"You very busy?" he asked.
+
+The Editor making red marks on a long slip of printed paper threw the
+pencil down.
+
+"No.  I am done.  Social paragraphs.  This office is the place where
+everything is known about everybody--including even a great deal of
+nobodies.  Queer fellows drift in and out of this room.  Waifs and strays
+from home, from up-country, from the Pacific.  And, by the way, last time
+you were here you picked up one of that sort for your assistant--didn't
+you?"
+
+"I engaged an assistant only to stop your preaching about the evils of
+solitude," said Renouard hastily; and the pressman laughed at the
+half-resentful tone.  His laugh was not very loud, but his plump person
+shook all over.  He was aware that his younger friend's deference to his
+advice was based only on an imperfect belief in his wisdom--or his
+sagacity.  But it was he who had first helped Renouard in his plans of
+exploration: the five-years' programme of scientific adventure, of work,
+of danger and endurance, carried out with such distinction and rewarded
+modestly with the lease of Malata island by the frugal colonial
+government.  And this reward, too, had been due to the journalist's
+advocacy with word and pen--for he was an influential man in the
+community.  Doubting very much if Renouard really liked him, he was
+himself without great sympathy for a certain side of that man which he
+could not quite make out.  He only felt it obscurely to be his real
+personality--the true--and, perhaps, the absurd.  As, for instance, in
+that case of the assistant.  Renouard had given way to the arguments of
+his friend and backer--the argument against the unwholesome effect of
+solitude, the argument for the safety of companionship even if
+quarrelsome.  Very well.  In this docility he was sensible and even
+likeable.  But what did he do next?  Instead of taking counsel as to the
+choice with his old backer and friend, and a man, besides, knowing
+everybody employed and unemployed on the pavements of the town, this
+extraordinary Renouard suddenly and almost surreptitiously picked up a
+fellow--God knows who--and sailed away with him back to Malata in a
+hurry; a proceeding obviously rash and at the same time not quite
+straight.  That was the sort of thing.  The secretly unforgiving
+journalist laughed a little longer and then ceased to shake all over.
+
+"Oh, yes.  About that assistant of yours. . . ."
+
+"What about him," said Renouard, after waiting a while, with a shadow of
+uneasiness on his face.
+
+"Have you nothing to tell me of him?"
+
+"Nothing except. . . ."  Incipient grimness vanished out of Renouard's
+aspect and his voice, while he hesitated as if reflecting seriously
+before he changed his mind.  "No.  Nothing whatever."
+
+"You haven't brought him along with you by chance--for a change."
+
+The Planter of Malata stared, then shook his head, and finally murmured
+carelessly: "I think he's very well where he is.  But I wish you could
+tell me why young Dunster insisted so much on my dining with his uncle
+last night.  Everybody knows I am not a society man."
+
+The Editor exclaimed at so much modesty.  Didn't his friend know that he
+was their one and only explorer--that he was the man experimenting with
+the silk plant. . . .
+
+"Still, that doesn't tell me why I was invited yesterday.  For young
+Dunster never thought of this civility before. . . ."
+
+"Our Willie," said the popular journalist, "never does anything without a
+purpose, that's a fact."
+
+"And to his uncle's house too!"
+
+"He lives there."
+
+"Yes.  But he might have given me a feed somewhere else.  The
+extraordinary part is that the old man did not seem to have anything
+special to say.  He smiled kindly on me once or twice, and that was all.
+It was quite a party, sixteen people."
+
+The Editor then, after expressing his regret that he had not been able to
+come, wanted to know if the party had been entertaining.
+
+Renouard regretted that his friend had not been there.  Being a man whose
+business or at least whose profession was to know everything that went on
+in this part of the globe, he could probably have told him something of
+some people lately arrived from home, who were amongst the guests.  Young
+Dunster (Willie), with his large shirt-front and streaks of white skin
+shining unpleasantly through the thin black hair plastered over the top
+of his head, bore down on him and introduced him to that party, as if he
+had been a trained dog or a child phenomenon.  Decidedly, he said, he
+disliked Willie--one of these large oppressive men. . . .
+
+A silence fell, and it was as if Renouard were not going to say anything
+more when, suddenly, he came out with the real object of his visit to the
+editorial room.
+
+"They looked to me like people under a spell."
+
+The Editor gazed at him appreciatively, thinking that, whether the effect
+of solitude or not, this was a proof of a sensitive perception of the
+expression of faces.
+
+"You omitted to tell me their name, but I can make a guess.  You mean
+Professor Moorsom, his daughter and sister--don't you?"
+
+Renouard assented.  Yes, a white-haired lady.  But from his silence, with
+his eyes fixed, yet avoiding his friend, it was easy to guess that it was
+not in the white-haired lady that he was interested.
+
+"Upon my word," he said, recovering his usual bearing.  "It looks to me
+as if I had been asked there only for the daughter to talk to me."
+
+He did not conceal that he had been greatly struck by her appearance.
+Nobody could have helped being impressed.  She was different from
+everybody else in that house, and it was not only the effect of her
+London clothes.  He did not take her down to dinner.  Willie did that.
+It was afterwards, on the terrace. . . .
+
+The evening was delightfully calm.  He was sitting apart and alone, and
+wishing himself somewhere else--on board the schooner for choice, with
+the dinner-harness off.  He hadn't exchanged forty words altogether
+during the evening with the other guests.  He saw her suddenly all by
+herself coming towards him along the dimly lighted terrace, quite from a
+distance.
+
+She was tall and supple, carrying nobly on her straight body a head of a
+character which to him appeared peculiar, something--well--pagan, crowned
+with a great wealth of hair.  He had been about to rise, but her decided
+approach caused him to remain on the seat.  He had not looked much at her
+that evening.  He had not that freedom of gaze acquired by the habit of
+society and the frequent meetings with strangers.  It was not shyness,
+but the reserve of a man not used to the world and to the practice of
+covert staring, with careless curiosity.  All he had captured by his
+first, keen, instantly lowered, glance was the impression that her hair
+was magnificently red and her eyes very black.  It was a troubling
+effect, but it had been evanescent; he had forgotten it almost till very
+unexpectedly he saw her coming down the terrace slow and eager, as if she
+were restraining herself, and with a rhythmic upward undulation of her
+whole figure.  The light from an open window fell across her path, and
+suddenly all that mass of arranged hair appeared incandescent, chiselled
+and fluid, with the daring suggestion of a helmet of burnished copper and
+the flowing lines of molten metal.  It kindled in him an astonished
+admiration.  But he said nothing of it to his friend the Editor.  Neither
+did he tell him that her approach woke up in his brain the image of
+love's infinite grace and the sense of the inexhaustible joy that lives
+in beauty.  No!  What he imparted to the Editor were no emotions, but
+mere facts conveyed in a deliberate voice and in uninspired words.
+
+"That young lady came and sat down by me.  She said: 'Are you French, Mr.
+Renouard?'"
+
+He had breathed a whiff of perfume of which he said nothing either--of
+some perfume he did not know.  Her voice was low and distinct.  Her
+shoulders and her bare arms gleamed with an extraordinary splendour, and
+when she advanced her head into the light he saw the admirable contour of
+the face, the straight fine nose with delicate nostrils, the exquisite
+crimson brushstroke of the lips on this oval without colour.  The
+expression of the eyes was lost in a shadowy mysterious play of jet and
+silver, stirring under the red coppery gold of the hair as though she had
+been a being made of ivory and precious metals changed into living
+tissue.
+
+". . . I told her my people were living in Canada, but that I was brought
+up in England before coming out here.  I can't imagine what interest she
+could have in my history."
+
+"And you complain of her interest?"
+
+The accent of the all-knowing journalist seemed to jar on the Planter of
+Malata.
+
+"No!" he said, in a deadened voice that was almost sullen.  But after a
+short silence he went on.  "Very extraordinary.  I told her I came out to
+wander at large in the world when I was nineteen, almost directly after I
+left school.  It seems that her late brother was in the same school a
+couple of years before me.  She wanted me to tell her what I did at first
+when I came out here; what other men found to do when they came
+out--where they went, what was likely to happen to them--as if I could
+guess and foretell from my experience the fates of men who come out here
+with a hundred different projects, for hundreds of different reasons--for
+no reason but restlessness--who come, and go, and disappear!
+Preposterous.  She seemed to want to hear their histories.  I told her
+that most of them were not worth telling."
+
+The distinguished journalist leaning on his elbow, his head resting
+against the knuckles of his left hand, listened with great attention, but
+gave no sign of that surprise which Renouard, pausing, seemed to expect.
+
+"You know something," the latter said brusquely.  The all-knowing man
+moved his head slightly and said, "Yes.  But go on."
+
+"It's just this.  There is no more to it.  I found myself talking to her
+of my adventures, of my early days.  It couldn't possibly have interested
+her.  Really," he cried, "this is most extraordinary.  Those people have
+something on their minds.  We sat in the light of the window, and her
+father prowled about the terrace, with his hands behind his back and his
+head drooping.  The white-haired lady came to the dining-room window
+twice--to look at us I am certain.  The other guests began to go
+away--and still we sat there.  Apparently these people are staying with
+the Dunsters.  It was old Mrs. Dunster who put an end to the thing.  The
+father and the aunt circled about as if they were afraid of interfering
+with the girl.  Then she got up all at once, gave me her hand, and said
+she hoped she would see me again."
+
+While he was speaking Renouard saw again the sway of her figure in a
+movement of grace and strength--felt the pressure of her hand--heard the
+last accents of the deep murmur that came from her throat so white in the
+light of the window, and remembered the black rays of her steady eyes
+passing off his face when she turned away.  He remembered all this
+visually, and it was not exactly pleasurable.  It was rather startling
+like the discovery of a new faculty in himself.  There are faculties one
+would rather do without--such, for instance, as seeing through a stone
+wall or remembering a person with this uncanny vividness.  And what about
+those two people belonging to her with their air of expectant solicitude!
+Really, those figures from home got in front of one.  In fact, their
+persistence in getting between him and the solid forms of the everyday
+material world had driven Renouard to call on his friend at the office.
+He hoped that a little common, gossipy information would lay the ghost of
+that unexpected dinner-party.  Of course the proper person to go to would
+have been young Dunster, but, he couldn't stand Willie Dunster--not at
+any price.
+
+In the pause the Editor had changed his attitude, faced his desk, and
+smiled a faint knowing smile.
+
+"Striking girl--eh?" he said.
+
+The incongruity of the word was enough to make one jump out of the chair.
+Striking!  That girl striking!  Stri . . .!  But Renouard restrained his
+feelings.  His friend was not a person to give oneself away to.  And,
+after all, this sort of speech was what he had come there to hear.  As,
+however, he had made a movement he re-settled himself comfortably and
+said, with very creditable indifference, that yes--she was, rather.
+Especially amongst a lot of over-dressed frumps.  There wasn't one woman
+under forty there.
+
+"Is that the way to speak of the cream of our society; the 'top of the
+basket,' as the French say," the Editor remonstrated with mock
+indignation.  "You aren't moderate in your expressions--you know."
+
+"I express myself very little," interjected Renouard seriously.
+
+"I will tell you what you are.  You are a fellow that doesn't count the
+cost.  Of course you are safe with me, but will you never learn. . . ."
+
+"What struck me most," interrupted the other, "is that she should pick me
+out for such a long conversation."
+
+"That's perhaps because you were the most remarkable of the men there."
+
+Renouard shook his head.
+
+"This shot doesn't seem to me to hit the mark," he said calmly.  "Try
+again."
+
+"Don't you believe me?  Oh, you modest creature.  Well, let me assure you
+that under ordinary circumstances it would have been a good shot.  You
+are sufficiently remarkable.  But you seem a pretty acute customer too.
+The circumstances are extraordinary.  By Jove they are!"
+
+He mused.  After a time the Planter of Malata dropped a negligent--
+
+"And you know them."
+
+"And I know them," assented the all-knowing Editor, soberly, as though
+the occasion were too special for a display of professional vanity; a
+vanity so well known to Renouard that its absence augmented his wonder
+and almost made him uneasy as if portending bad news of some sort.
+
+"You have met those people?" he asked.
+
+"No.  I was to have met them last night, but I had to send an apology to
+Willie in the morning.  It was then that he had the bright idea to invite
+you to fill the place, from a muddled notion that you could be of use.
+Willie is stupid sometimes.  For it is clear that you are the last man
+able to help."
+
+"How on earth do I come to be mixed up in this--whatever it is?"
+Renouard's voice was slightly altered by nervous irritation.  "I only
+arrived here yesterday morning."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+His friend the Editor turned to him squarely.  "Willie took me into
+consultation, and since he seems to have let you in I may just as well
+tell you what is up.  I shall try to be as short as I can.  But in
+confidence--mind!"
+
+He waited.  Renouard, his uneasiness growing on him unreasonably,
+assented by a nod, and the other lost no time in beginning.  Professor
+Moorsom--physicist and philosopher--fine head of white hair, to judge
+from the photographs--plenty of brains in the head too--all these famous
+books--surely even Renouard would know. . . .
+
+Renouard muttered moodily that it wasn't his sort of reading, and his
+friend hastened to assure him earnestly that neither was it his
+sort--except as a matter of business and duty, for the literary page of
+that newspaper which was his property (and the pride of his life).  The
+only literary newspaper in the Antipodes could not ignore the fashionable
+philosopher of the age.  Not that anybody read Moorsom at the Antipodes,
+but everybody had heard of him--women, children, dock labourers, cabmen.
+The only person (besides himself) who had read Moorsom, as far as he
+knew, was old Dunster, who used to call himself a Moorsomian (or was it
+Moorsomite) years and years ago, long before Moorsom had worked himself
+up into the great swell he was now, in every way. . . Socially too.
+Quite the fashion in the highest world.
+
+Renouard listened with profoundly concealed attention.  "A charlatan," he
+muttered languidly.
+
+"Well--no.  I should say not.  I shouldn't wonder though if most of his
+writing had been done with his tongue in his cheek.  Of course.  That's
+to be expected.  I tell you what: the only really honest writing is to be
+found in newspapers and nowhere else--and don't you forget it."
+
+The Editor paused with a basilisk stare till Renouard had conceded a
+casual: "I dare say," and only then went on to explain that old Dunster,
+during his European tour, had been made rather a lion of in London, where
+he stayed with the Moorsoms--he meant the father and the girl.  The
+professor had been a widower for a long time.
+
+"She doesn't look just a girl," muttered Renouard.  The other agreed.
+Very likely not.  Had been playing the London hostess to tip-top people
+ever since she put her hair up, probably.
+
+"I don't expect to see any girlish bloom on her when I do have the
+privilege," he continued.  "Those people are staying with the Dunster's
+_incog._, in a manner, you understand--something like royalties.  They
+don't deceive anybody, but they want to be left to themselves.  We have
+even kept them out of the paper--to oblige old Dunster.  But we shall put
+your arrival in--our local celebrity."
+
+"Heavens!"
+
+"Yes.  Mr. G. Renouard, the explorer, whose indomitable energy, etc., and
+who is now working for the prosperity of our country in another way on
+his Malata plantation . . . And, by the by, how's the silk
+plant--flourishing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you bring any fibre?"
+
+"Schooner-full."
+
+"I see.  To be transhipped to Liverpool for experimental manufacture, eh?
+Eminent capitalists at home very much interested, aren't they?"
+
+"They are."
+
+A silence fell.  Then the Editor uttered slowly--"You will be a rich man
+some day."
+
+Renouard's face did not betray his opinion of that confident prophecy.
+He didn't say anything till his friend suggested in the same meditative
+voice--
+
+"You ought to interest Moorsom in the affair too--since Willie has let
+you in."
+
+"A philosopher!"
+
+"I suppose he isn't above making a bit of money.  And he may be clever at
+it for all you know.  I have a notion that he's a fairly practical old
+cove. . . . Anyhow," and here the tone of the speaker took on a tinge of
+respect, "he has made philosophy pay."
+
+Renouard raised his eyes, repressed an impulse to jump up, and got out of
+the arm-chair slowly.  "It isn't perhaps a bad idea," he said.  "I'll
+have to call there in any case."
+
+He wondered whether he had managed to keep his voice steady, its tone
+unconcerned enough; for his emotion was strong though it had nothing to
+do with the business aspect of this suggestion.  He moved in the room in
+vague preparation for departure, when he heard a soft laugh.  He spun
+about quickly with a frown, but the Editor was not laughing at him.  He
+was chuckling across the big desk at the wall: a preliminary of some
+speech for which Renouard, recalled to himself, waited silent and
+mistrustful.
+
+"No!  You would never guess!  No one would ever guess what these people
+are after.  Willie's eyes bulged out when he came to me with the tale."
+
+"They always do," remarked Renouard with disgust.  "He's stupid."
+
+"He was startled.  And so was I after he told me.  It's a search party.
+They are out looking for a man.  Willie's soft heart's enlisted in the
+cause."
+
+Renouard repeated: "Looking for a man."
+
+He sat down suddenly as if on purpose to stare.  "Did Willie come to you
+to borrow the lantern," he asked sarcastically, and got up again for no
+apparent reason.
+
+"What lantern?" snapped the puzzled Editor, and his face darkened with
+suspicion.  "You, Renouard, are always alluding to things that aren't
+clear to me.  If you were in politics, I, as a party journalist, wouldn't
+trust you further than I could see you.  Not an inch further.  You are
+such a sophisticated beggar.  Listen: the man is the man Miss Moorsom was
+engaged to for a year.  He couldn't have been a nobody, anyhow.  But he
+doesn't seem to have been very wise.  Hard luck for the young lady."
+
+He spoke with feeling.  It was clear that what he had to tell appealed to
+his sentiment.  Yet, as an experienced man of the world, he marked his
+amused wonder.  Young man of good family and connections, going
+everywhere, yet not merely a man about town, but with a foot in the two
+big F's.
+
+Renouard lounging aimlessly in the room turned round: "And what the
+devil's that?" he asked faintly.
+
+"Why Fashion and Finance," explained the Editor.  "That's how I call it.
+There are the three R's at the bottom of the social edifice and the two
+F's on the top.  See?"
+
+"Ha! Ha!  Excellent!  Ha! Ha!" Renouard laughed with stony eyes.
+
+"And you proceed from one set to the other in this democratic age," the
+Editor went on with unperturbed complacency.  "That is if you are clever
+enough.  The only danger is in being too clever.  And I think something
+of the sort happened here.  That swell I am speaking of got himself into
+a mess.  Apparently a very ugly mess of a financial character.  You will
+understand that Willie did not go into details with me.  They were not
+imparted to him with very great abundance either.  But a bad
+mess--something of the criminal order.  Of course he was innocent.  But
+he had to quit all the same."
+
+"Ha! Ha!" Renouard laughed again abruptly, staring as before.  "So
+there's one more big F in the tale."
+
+"What do you mean?" inquired the Editor quickly, with an air as if his
+patent were being infringed.
+
+"I mean--Fool."
+
+"No.  I wouldn't say that.  I wouldn't say that."
+
+"Well--let him be a scoundrel then.  What the devil do I care."
+
+"But hold on!  You haven't heard the end of the story."
+
+Renouard, his hat on his head already, sat down with the disdainful smile
+of a man who had discounted the moral of the story.  Still he sat down
+and the Editor swung his revolving chair right round.  He was full of
+unction.
+
+"Imprudent, I should say.  In many ways money is as dangerous to handle
+as gunpowder.  You can't be too careful either as to who you are working
+with.  Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and--his
+familiar haunts knew him no more.  But before he vanished he went to see
+Miss Moorsom.  That very fact argues for his innocence--don't it?  What
+was said between them no man knows--unless the professor had the
+confidence from his daughter.  There couldn't have been much to say.
+There was nothing for it but to let him go--was there?--for the affair
+had got into the papers.  And perhaps the kindest thing would have been
+to forget him.  Anyway the easiest.  Forgiveness would have been more
+difficult, I fancy, for a young lady of spirit and position drawn into an
+ugly affair like that.  Any ordinary young lady, I mean.  Well, the
+fellow asked nothing better than to be forgotten, only he didn't find it
+easy to do so himself, because he would write home now and then.  Not to
+any of his friends though.  He had no near relations.  The professor had
+been his guardian.  No, the poor devil wrote now and then to an old
+retired butler of his late father, somewhere in the country, forbidding
+him at the same time to let any one know of his whereabouts.  So that
+worthy old ass would go up and dodge about the Moorsom's town house,
+perhaps waylay Miss Moorsom's maid, and then would write to 'Master
+Arthur' that the young lady looked well and happy, or some such cheerful
+intelligence.  I dare say he wanted to be forgotten, but I shouldn't
+think he was much cheered by the news.  What would you say?"
+
+Renouard, his legs stretched out and his chin on his breast, said
+nothing.  A sensation which was not curiosity, but rather a vague nervous
+anxiety, distinctly unpleasant, like a mysterious symptom of some malady,
+prevented him from getting up and going away.
+
+"Mixed feelings," the Editor opined.  "Many fellows out here receive news
+from home with mixed feelings.  But what will his feelings be when he
+hears what I am going to tell you now?  For we know he has not heard yet.
+Six months ago a city clerk, just a common drudge of finance, gets
+himself convicted of a common embezzlement or something of that kind.
+Then seeing he's in for a long sentence he thinks of making his
+conscience comfortable, and makes a clean breast of an old story of
+tampered with, or else suppressed, documents, a story which clears
+altogether the honesty of our ruined gentleman.  That embezzling fellow
+was in a position to know, having been employed by the firm before the
+smash.  There was no doubt about the character being cleared--but where
+the cleared man was nobody could tell.  Another sensation in society.
+And then Miss Moorsom says: 'He will come back to claim me, and I'll
+marry him.'  But he didn't come back.  Between you and me I don't think
+he was much wanted--except by Miss Moorsom.  I imagine she's used to have
+her own way.  She grew impatient, and declared that if she knew where the
+man was she would go to him.  But all that could be got out of the old
+butler was that the last envelope bore the postmark of our beautiful
+city; and that this was the only address of 'Master Arthur' that he ever
+had.  That and no more.  In fact the fellow was at his last gasp--with a
+bad heart.  Miss Moorsom wasn't allowed to see him.  She had gone herself
+into the country to learn what she could, but she had to stay downstairs
+while the old chap's wife went up to the invalid.  She brought down the
+scrap of intelligence I've told you of.  He was already too far gone to
+be cross-examined on it, and that very night he died.  He didn't leave
+behind him much to go by, did he?  Our Willie hinted to me that there had
+been pretty stormy days in the professor's house, but--here they are.  I
+have a notion she isn't the kind of everyday young lady who may be
+permitted to gallop about the world all by herself--eh?  Well, I think it
+rather fine of her, but I quite understand that the professor needed all
+his philosophy under the circumstances.  She is his only child now--and
+brilliant--what?  Willie positively spluttered trying to describe her to
+me; and I could see directly you came in that you had an uncommon
+experience."
+
+Renouard, with an irritated gesture, tilted his hat more forward on his
+eyes, as though he were bored.  The Editor went on with the remark that
+to be sure neither he (Renouard) nor yet Willie were much used to meet
+girls of that remarkable superiority.  Willie when learning business with
+a firm in London, years before, had seen none but boarding-house society,
+he guessed.  As to himself in the good old days, when he trod the
+glorious flags of Fleet Street, he neither had access to, nor yet would
+have cared for the swells.  Nothing interested him then but parliamentary
+politics and the oratory of the House of Commons.
+
+He paid to this not very distant past the tribute of a tender,
+reminiscent smile, and returned to his first idea that for a society girl
+her action was rather fine.  All the same the professor could not be very
+pleased.  The fellow if he was as pure as a lily now was just about as
+devoid of the goods of the earth.  And there were misfortunes, however
+undeserved, which damaged a man's standing permanently.  On the other
+hand, it was difficult to oppose cynically a noble impulse--not to speak
+of the great love at the root of it.  Ah!  Love!  And then the lady was
+quite capable of going off by herself.  She was of age, she had money of
+her own, plenty of pluck too.  Moorsom must have concluded that it was
+more truly paternal, more prudent too, and generally safer all round to
+let himself be dragged into this chase.  The aunt came along for the same
+reasons.  It was given out at home as a trip round the world of the usual
+kind.
+
+Renouard had risen and remained standing with his heart beating, and
+strangely affected by this tale, robbed as it was of all glamour by the
+prosaic personality of the narrator.  The Editor added: "I've been asked
+to help in the search--you know."
+
+Renouard muttered something about an appointment and went out into the
+street.  His inborn sanity could not defend him from a misty creeping
+jealousy.  He thought that obviously no man of that sort could be worthy
+of such a woman's devoted fidelity.  Renouard, however, had lived long
+enough to reflect that a man's activities, his views, and even his ideas
+may be very inferior to his character; and moved by a delicate
+consideration for that splendid girl he tried to think out for the man a
+character of inward excellence and outward gifts--some extraordinary
+seduction.  But in vain.  Fresh from months of solitude and from days at
+sea, her splendour presented itself to him absolutely unconquerable in
+its perfection, unless by her own folly.  It was easier to suspect her of
+this than to imagine in the man qualities which would be worthy of her.
+Easier and less degrading.  Because folly may be generous--could be
+nothing else but generosity in her; whereas to imagine her subjugated by
+something common was intolerable.
+
+Because of the force of the physical impression he had received from her
+personality (and such impressions are the real origins of the deepest
+movements of our soul) this conception of her was even inconceivable.
+But no Prince Charming has ever lived out of a fairy tale.  He doesn't
+walk the worlds of Fashion and Finance--and with a stumbling gait at
+that.  Generosity.  Yes.  It was her generosity.  But this generosity was
+altogether regal in its splendour, almost absurd in its lavishness--or,
+perhaps, divine.
+
+In the evening, on board his schooner, sitting on the rail, his arms
+folded on his breast and his eyes fixed on the deck, he let the darkness
+catch him unawares in the midst of a meditation on the mechanism of
+sentiment and the springs of passion.  And all the time he had an abiding
+consciousness of her bodily presence.  The effect on his senses had been
+so penetrating that in the middle of the night, rousing up suddenly,
+wide-eyed in the darkness of his cabin, he did not create a faint mental
+vision of her person for himself, but, more intimately affected, he
+scented distinctly the faint perfume she used, and could almost have
+sworn that he had been awakened by the soft rustle of her dress.  He even
+sat up listening in the dark for a time, then sighed and lay down again,
+not agitated but, on the contrary, oppressed by the sensation of
+something that had happened to him and could not be undone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+In the afternoon he lounged into the editorial office, carrying with
+affected nonchalance that weight of the irremediable he had felt laid on
+him suddenly in the small hours of the night--that consciousness of
+something that could no longer be helped.  His patronising friend
+informed him at once that he had made the acquaintance of the Moorsom
+party last night.  At the Dunsters, of course.  Dinner.
+
+"Very quiet.  Nobody there.  It was much better for the business.  I say . . ."
+
+Renouard, his hand grasping the back of a chair, stared down at him
+dumbly.
+
+"Phew!  That's a stunning girl. . . Why do you want to sit on that chair?
+It's uncomfortable!"
+
+"I wasn't going to sit on it."  Renouard walked slowly to the window,
+glad to find in himself enough self-control to let go the chair instead
+of raising it on high and bringing it down on the Editor's head.
+
+"Willie kept on gazing at her with tears in his boiled eyes.  You should
+have seen him bending sentimentally over her at dinner."
+
+"Don't," said Renouard in such an anguished tone that the Editor turned
+right round to look at his back.
+
+"You push your dislike of young Dunster too far.  It's positively
+morbid," he disapproved mildly.  "We can't be all beautiful after thirty. . . .
+I talked a little, about you mostly, to the professor.  He appeared
+to be interested in the silk plant--if only as a change from the great
+subject.  Miss Moorsom didn't seem to mind when I confessed to her that I
+had taken you into the confidence of the thing.  Our Willie approved too.
+Old Dunster with his white beard seemed to give me his blessing.  All
+those people have a great opinion of you, simply because I told them that
+you've led every sort of life one can think of before you got struck on
+exploration.  They want you to make suggestions.  What do you think
+'Master Arthur' is likely to have taken to?"
+
+"Something easy," muttered Renouard without unclenching his teeth.
+
+"Hunting man.  Athlete.  Don't be hard on the chap.  He may be riding
+boundaries, or droving cattle, or humping his swag about the back-blocks
+away to the devil--somewhere.  He may be even prospecting at the back of
+beyond--this very moment."
+
+"Or lying dead drunk in a roadside pub.  It's late enough in the day for
+that."
+
+The Editor looked up instinctively.  The clock was pointing at a quarter
+to five.  "Yes, it is," he admitted.  "But it needn't be.  And he may
+have lit out into the Western Pacific all of a sudden--say in a trading
+schooner.  Though I really don't see in what capacity.  Still . . . "
+
+"Or he may be passing at this very moment under this very window."
+
+"Not he . . . and I wish you would get away from it to where one can see
+your face.  I hate talking to a man's back.  You stand there like a
+hermit on a sea-shore growling to yourself.  I tell you what it is,
+Geoffrey, you don't like mankind."
+
+"I don't make my living by talking about mankind's affairs," Renouard
+defended himself.  But he came away obediently and sat down in the
+arm-chair.  "How can you be so certain that your man isn't down there in
+the street?" he asked.  "It's neither more nor less probable than every
+single one of your other suppositions."
+
+Placated by Renouard's docility the Editor gazed at him for a while.
+"Aha!  I'll tell you how.  Learn then that we have begun the campaign.
+We have telegraphed his description to the police of every township up
+and down the land.  And what's more we've ascertained definitely that he
+hasn't been in this town for the last three months at least.  How much
+longer he's been away we can't tell."
+
+"That's very curious."
+
+"It's very simple.  Miss Moorsom wrote to him, to the post office here
+directly she returned to London after her excursion into the country to
+see the old butler.  Well--her letter is still lying there.  It has not
+been called for.  Ergo, this town is not his usual abode.  Personally, I
+never thought it was.  But he cannot fail to turn up some time or other.
+Our main hope lies just in the certitude that he must come to town sooner
+or later.  Remember he doesn't know that the butler is dead, and he will
+want to inquire for a letter.  Well, he'll find a note from Miss
+Moorsom."
+
+Renouard, silent, thought that it was likely enough.  His profound
+distaste for this conversation was betrayed by an air of weariness
+darkening his energetic sun-tanned features, and by the augmented
+dreaminess of his eyes.  The Editor noted it as a further proof of that
+immoral detachment from mankind, of that callousness of sentiment
+fostered by the unhealthy conditions of solitude--according to his own
+favourite theory.  Aloud he observed that as long as a man had not given
+up correspondence he could not be looked upon as lost.  Fugitive
+criminals had been tracked in that way by justice, he reminded his
+friend; then suddenly changed the bearing of the subject somewhat by
+asking if Renouard had heard from his people lately, and if every member
+of his large tribe was well and happy.
+
+"Yes, thanks."
+
+The tone was curt, as if repelling a liberty.  Renouard did not like
+being asked about his people, for whom he had a profound and remorseful
+affection.  He had not seen a single human being to whom he was related,
+for many years, and he was extremely different from them all.
+
+On the very morning of his arrival from his island he had gone to a set
+of pigeon-holes in Willie Dunster's outer office and had taken out from a
+compartment labelled "Malata" a very small accumulation of envelopes, a
+few addressed to himself, and one addressed to his assistant, all to the
+care of the firm, W. Dunster and Co.  As opportunity offered, the firm
+used to send them on to Malata either by a man-of-war schooner going on a
+cruise, or by some trading craft proceeding that way.  But for the last
+four months there had been no opportunity.
+
+"You going to stay here some time?" asked the Editor, after a longish
+silence.
+
+Renouard, perfunctorily, did see no reason why he should make a long
+stay.
+
+"For health, for your mental health, my boy," rejoined the newspaper man.
+"To get used to human faces so that they don't hit you in the eye so hard
+when you walk about the streets.  To get friendly with your kind.  I
+suppose that assistant of yours can be trusted to look after things?"
+
+"There's the half-caste too.  The Portuguese.  He knows what's to be
+done."
+
+"Aha!"  The Editor looked sharply at his friend.  "What's his name?"
+
+"Who's name?"
+
+"The assistant's you picked up on the sly behind my back."
+
+Renouard made a slight movement of impatience.
+
+"I met him unexpectedly one evening.  I thought he would do as well as
+another.  He had come from up country and didn't seem happy in a town.
+He told me his name was Walter.  I did not ask him for proofs, you know."
+
+"I don't think you get on very well with him."
+
+"Why?  What makes you think so."
+
+"I don't know.  Something reluctant in your manner when he's in
+question."
+
+"Really.  My manner!  I don't think he's a great subject for
+conversation, perhaps.  Why not drop him?"
+
+"Of course!  You wouldn't confess to a mistake.  Not you.  Nevertheless I
+have my suspicions about it."
+
+Renouard got up to go, but hesitated, looking down at the seated Editor.
+
+"How funny," he said at last with the utmost seriousness, and was making
+for the door, when the voice of his friend stopped him.
+
+"You know what has been said of you?  That you couldn't get on with
+anybody you couldn't kick.  Now, confess--is there any truth in the soft
+impeachment?"
+
+"No," said Renouard.  "Did you print that in your paper."
+
+"No.  I didn't quite believe it.  But I will tell you what I believe.  I
+believe that when your heart is set on some object you are a man that
+doesn't count the cost to yourself or others.  And this shall get printed
+some day."
+
+"Obituary notice?" Renouard dropped negligently.
+
+"Certain--some day."
+
+"Do you then regard yourself as immortal?"
+
+"No, my boy.  I am not immortal.  But the voice of the press goes on for
+ever. . . . And it will say that this was the secret of your great
+success in a task where better men than you--meaning no offence--did fail
+repeatedly."
+
+"Success," muttered Renouard, pulling-to the office door after him with
+considerable energy.  And the letters of the word PRIVATE like a row of
+white eyes seemed to stare after his back sinking down the staircase of
+that temple of publicity.
+
+Renouard had no doubt that all the means of publicity would be put at the
+service of love and used for the discovery of the loved man.  He did not
+wish him dead.  He did not wish him any harm.  We are all equipped with a
+fund of humanity which is not exhausted without many and repeated
+provocations--and this man had done him no evil.  But before Renouard had
+left old Dunster's house, at the conclusion of the call he made there
+that very afternoon, he had discovered in himself the desire that the
+search might last long.  He never really flattered himself that it might
+fail.  It seemed to him that there was no other course in this world for
+himself, for all mankind, but resignation.  And he could not help
+thinking that Professor Moorsom had arrived at the same conclusion too.
+
+Professor Moorsom, slight frame of middle height, a thoughtful keen head
+under the thick wavy hair, veiled dark eyes under straight eyebrows, and
+with an inward gaze which when disengaged and arriving at one seemed to
+issue from an obscure dream of books, from the limbo of meditation,
+showed himself extremely gracious to him.  Renouard guessed in him a man
+whom an incurable habit of investigation and analysis had made gentle and
+indulgent; inapt for action, and more sensitive to the thoughts than to
+the events of existence.  Withal not crushed, sub-ironic without a trace
+of acidity, and with a simple manner which put people at ease quickly.
+They had a long conversation on the terrace commanding an extended view
+of the town and the harbour.
+
+The splendid immobility of the bay resting under his gaze, with its grey
+spurs and shining indentations, helped Renouard to regain his
+self-possession, which he had felt shaken, in coming out on the terrace,
+into the setting of the most powerful emotion of his life, when he had
+sat within a foot of Miss Moorsom with fire in his breast, a humming in
+his ears, and in a complete disorder of his mind.  There was the very
+garden seat on which he had been enveloped in the radiant spell.  And
+presently he was sitting on it again with the professor talking of her.
+Near by the patriarchal Dunster leaned forward in a wicker arm-chair,
+benign and a little deaf, his big hand to his ear with the innocent
+eagerness of his advanced age remembering the fires of life.
+
+It was with a sort of apprehension that Renouard looked forward to seeing
+Miss Moorsom.  And strangely enough it resembled the state of mind of a
+man who fears disenchantment more than sortilege.  But he need not have
+been afraid.  Directly he saw her in a distance at the other end of the
+terrace he shuddered to the roots of his hair.  With her approach the
+power of speech left him for a time.  Mrs. Dunster and her aunt were
+accompanying her.  All these people sat down; it was an intimate circle
+into which Renouard felt himself cordially admitted; and the talk was of
+the great search which occupied all their minds.  Discretion was expected
+by these people, but of reticence as to the object of the journey there
+could be no question.  Nothing but ways and means and arrangements could
+be talked about.
+
+By fixing his eyes obstinately on the ground, which gave him an air of
+reflective sadness, Renouard managed to recover his self-possession.  He
+used it to keep his voice in a low key and to measure his words on the
+great subject.  And he took care with a great inward effort to make them
+reasonable without giving them a discouraging complexion.  For he did not
+want the quest to be given up, since it would mean her going away with
+her two attendant grey-heads to the other side of the world.
+
+He was asked to come again, to come often and take part in the counsels
+of all these people captivated by the sentimental enterprise of a
+declared love.  On taking Miss Moorsom's hand he looked up, would have
+liked to say something, but found himself voiceless, with his lips
+suddenly sealed.  She returned the pressure of his fingers, and he left
+her with her eyes vaguely staring beyond him, an air of listening for an
+expected sound, and the faintest possible smile on her lips.  A smile not
+for him, evidently, but the reflection of some deep and inscrutable
+thought.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+He went on board his schooner.  She lay white, and as if suspended, in
+the crepuscular atmosphere of sunset mingling with the ashy gleam of the
+vast anchorage.  He tried to keep his thoughts as sober, as reasonable,
+as measured as his words had been, lest they should get away from him and
+cause some sort of moral disaster.  What he was afraid of in the coming
+night was sleeplessness and the endless strain of that wearisome task.
+It had to be faced however.  He lay on his back, sighing profoundly in
+the dark, and suddenly beheld his very own self, carrying a small bizarre
+lamp, reflected in a long mirror inside a room in an empty and
+unfurnished palace.  In this startling image of himself he recognised
+somebody he had to follow--the frightened guide of his dream.  He
+traversed endless galleries, no end of lofty halls, innumerable doors.
+He lost himself utterly--he found his way again.  Room succeeded room.
+At last the lamp went out, and he stumbled against some object which,
+when he stooped for it, he found to be very cold and heavy to lift.  The
+sickly white light of dawn showed him the head of a statue.  Its marble
+hair was done in the bold lines of a helmet, on its lips the chisel had
+left a faint smile, and it resembled Miss Moorsom.  While he was staring
+at it fixedly, the head began to grow light in his fingers, to diminish
+and crumble to pieces, and at last turned into a handful of dust, which
+was blown away by a puff of wind so chilly that he woke up with a
+desperate shiver and leaped headlong out of his bed-place.  The day had
+really come.  He sat down by the cabin table, and taking his head between
+his hands, did not stir for a very long time.
+
+Very quiet, he set himself to review this dream.  The lamp, of course, he
+connected with the search for a man.  But on closer examination he
+perceived that the reflection of himself in the mirror was not really the
+true Renouard, but somebody else whose face he could not remember.  In
+the deserted palace he recognised a sinister adaptation by his brain of
+the long corridors with many doors, in the great building in which his
+friend's newspaper was lodged on the first floor.  The marble head with
+Miss Moorsom's face!  Well!  What other face could he have dreamed of?
+And her complexion was fairer than Parian marble, than the heads of
+angels.  The wind at the end was the morning breeze entering through the
+open porthole and touching his face before the schooner could swing to
+the chilly gust.
+
+Yes!  And all this rational explanation of the fantastic made it only
+more mysterious and weird.  There was something daemonic in that dream.
+It was one of those experiences which throw a man out of conformity with
+the established order of his kind and make him a creature of obscure
+suggestions.
+
+Henceforth, without ever trying to resist, he went every afternoon to the
+house where she lived.  He went there as passively as if in a dream.  He
+could never make out how he had attained the footing of intimacy in the
+Dunster mansion above the bay--whether on the ground of personal merit or
+as the pioneer of the vegetable silk industry.  It must have been the
+last, because he remembered distinctly, as distinctly as in a dream,
+hearing old Dunster once telling him that his next public task would be a
+careful survey of the Northern Districts to discover tracts suitable for
+the cultivation of the silk plant.  The old man wagged his beard at him
+sagely.  It was indeed as absurd as a dream.
+
+Willie of course would be there in the evening.  But he was more of a
+figure out of a nightmare, hovering about the circle of chairs in his
+dress-clothes like a gigantic, repulsive, and sentimental bat.  "Do away
+with the beastly cocoons all over the world," he buzzed in his blurred,
+water-logged voice.  He affected a great horror of insects of all kinds.
+One evening he appeared with a red flower in his button-hole.  Nothing
+could have been more disgustingly fantastic.  And he would also say to
+Renouard: "You may yet change the history of our country.  For economic
+conditions do shape the history of nations.  Eh?  What?"  And he would
+turn to Miss Moorsom for approval, lowering protectingly his spatulous
+nose and looking up with feeling from under his absurd eyebrows, which
+grew thin, in the manner of canebrakes, out of his spongy skin.  For this
+large, bilious creature was an economist and a sentimentalist, facile to
+tears, and a member of the Cobden Club.
+
+In order to see as little of him as possible Renouard began coming
+earlier so as to get away before his arrival, without curtailing too much
+the hours of secret contemplation for which he lived.  He had given up
+trying to deceive himself.  His resignation was without bounds.  He
+accepted the immense misfortune of being in love with a woman who was in
+search of another man only to throw herself into his arms.  With such
+desperate precision he defined in his thoughts the situation, the
+consciousness of which traversed like a sharp arrow the sudden silences
+of general conversation.  The only thought before which he quailed was
+the thought that this could not last; that it must come to an end.  He
+feared it instinctively as a sick man may fear death.  For it seemed to
+him that it must be the death of him followed by a lightless, bottomless
+pit.  But his resignation was not spared the torments of jealousy: the
+cruel, insensate, poignant, and imbecile jealousy, when it seems that a
+woman betrays us simply by this that she exists, that she breathes--and
+when the deep movements of her nerves or her soul become a matter of
+distracting suspicion, of killing doubt, of mortal anxiety.
+
+In the peculiar condition of their sojourn Miss Moorsom went out very
+little.  She accepted this seclusion at the Dunsters' mansion as in a
+hermitage, and lived there, watched over by a group of old people, with
+the lofty endurance of a condescending and strong-headed goddess.  It was
+impossible to say if she suffered from anything in the world, and whether
+this was the insensibility of a great passion concentrated on itself, or
+a perfect restraint of manner, or the indifference of superiority so
+complete as to be sufficient to itself.  But it was visible to Renouard
+that she took some pleasure in talking to him at times.  Was it because
+he was the only person near her age?  Was this, then, the secret of his
+admission to the circle?
+
+He admired her voice as well poised as her movements, as her attitudes.
+He himself had always been a man of tranquil tones.  But the power of
+fascination had torn him out of his very nature so completely that to
+preserve his habitual calmness from going to pieces had become a terrible
+effort.
+
+He used to go from her on board the schooner exhausted, broken, shaken
+up, as though he had been put to the most exquisite torture.  When he saw
+her approaching he always had a moment of hallucination.  She was a misty
+and fair creature, fitted for invisible music, for the shadows of love,
+for the murmurs of waters.  After a time (he could not be always staring
+at the ground) he would summon up all his resolution and look at her.
+There was a sparkle in the clear obscurity of her eyes; and when she
+turned them on him they seemed to give a new meaning to life.  He would
+say to himself that another man would have found long before the happy
+release of madness, his wits burnt to cinders in that radiance.  But no
+such luck for him.  His wits had come unscathed through the furnaces of
+hot suns, of blazing deserts, of flaming angers against the weaknesses of
+men and the obstinate cruelties of hostile nature.
+
+Being sane he had to be constantly on his guard against falling into
+adoring silences or breaking out into wild speeches.  He had to keep
+watch on his eyes, his limbs, on the muscles of his face.  Their
+conversations were such as they could be between these two people: she a
+young lady fresh from the thick twilight of four million people and the
+artificiality of several London seasons; he the man of definite
+conquering tasks, the familiar of wide horizons, and in his very repose
+holding aloof from these agglomerations of units in which one loses one's
+importance even to oneself.  They had no common conversational small
+change.  They had to use the great pieces of general ideas, but they
+exchanged them trivially.  It was no serious commerce.  Perhaps she had
+not much of that coin.  Nothing significant came from her.  It could not
+be said that she had received from the contacts of the external world
+impressions of a personal kind, different from other women.  What was
+ravishing in her was her quietness and, in her grave attitudes, the
+unfailing brilliance of her femininity.  He did not know what there was
+under that ivory forehead so splendidly shaped, so gloriously crowned.
+He could not tell what were her thoughts, her feelings.  Her replies were
+reflective, always preceded by a short silence, while he hung on her lips
+anxiously.  He felt himself in the presence of a mysterious being in whom
+spoke an unknown voice, like the voice of oracles, bringing everlasting
+unrest to the heart.
+
+He was thankful enough to sit in silence with secretly clenched teeth,
+devoured by jealousy--and nobody could have guessed that his quiet
+deferential bearing to all these grey-heads was the supreme effort of
+stoicism, that the man was engaged in keeping a sinister watch on his
+tortures lest his strength should fail him.  As before, when grappling
+with other forces of nature, he could find in himself all sorts of
+courage except the courage to run away.
+
+It was perhaps from the lack of subjects they could have in common that
+Miss Moorsom made him so often speak of his own life.  He did not shrink
+from talking about himself, for he was free from that exacerbated, timid
+vanity which seals so many vain-glorious lips.  He talked to her in his
+restrained voice, gazing at the tip of her shoe, and thinking that the
+time was bound to come soon when her very inattention would get weary of
+him.  And indeed on stealing a glance he would see her dazzling and
+perfect, her eyes vague, staring in mournful immobility, with a drooping
+head that made him think of a tragic Venus arising before him, not from
+the foam of the sea, but from a distant, still more formless, mysterious,
+and potent immensity of mankind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+One afternoon Renouard stepping out on the terrace found nobody there.
+It was for him, at the same time, a melancholy disappointment and a
+poignant relief.
+
+The heat was great, the air was still, all the long windows of the house
+stood wide open.  At the further end, grouped round a lady's work-table,
+several chairs disposed sociably suggested invisible occupants, a company
+of conversing shades.  Renouard looked towards them with a sort of dread.
+A most elusive, faint sound of ghostly talk issuing from one of the rooms
+added to the illusion and stopped his already hesitating footsteps.  He
+leaned over the balustrade of stone near a squat vase holding a tropical
+plant of a bizarre shape.  Professor Moorsom coming up from the garden
+with a book under his arm and a white parasol held over his bare head,
+found him there and, closing the parasol, leaned over by his side with a
+remark on the increasing heat of the season.  Renouard assented and
+changed his position a little; the other, after a short silence,
+administered unexpectedly a question which, like the blow of a club on
+the head, deprived Renouard of the power of speech and even thought, but,
+more cruel, left him quivering with apprehension, not of death but of
+everlasting torment.  Yet the words were extremely simple.
+
+"Something will have to be done soon.  We can't remain in a state of
+suspended expectation for ever.  Tell me what do you think of our
+chances?"
+
+Renouard, speechless, produced a faint smile.  The professor confessed in
+a jocular tone his impatience to complete the circuit of the globe and be
+done with it.  It was impossible to remain quartered on the dear
+excellent Dunsters for an indefinite time.  And then there were the
+lectures he had arranged to deliver in Paris.  A serious matter.
+
+That lectures by Professor Moorsom were a European event and that
+brilliant audiences would gather to hear them Renouard did not know.  All
+he was aware of was the shock of this hint of departure.  The menace of
+separation fell on his head like a thunderbolt.  And he saw the absurdity
+of his emotion, for hadn't he lived all these days under the very cloud?
+The professor, his elbows spread out, looked down into the garden and
+went on unburdening his mind.  Yes.  The department of sentiment was
+directed by his daughter, and she had plenty of volunteered moral
+support; but he had to look after the practical side of life without
+assistance.
+
+"I have the less hesitation in speaking to you about my anxiety, because
+I feel you are friendly to us and at the same time you are detached from
+all these sublimities--confound them."
+
+"What do you mean?" murmured Renouard.
+
+"I mean that you are capable of calm judgment.  Here the atmosphere is
+simply detestable.  Everybody has knuckled under to sentiment.  Perhaps
+your deliberate opinion could influence . . ."
+
+"You want Miss Moorsom to give it up?"  The professor turned to the young
+man dismally.
+
+"Heaven only knows what I want."
+
+Renouard leaning his back against the balustrade folded his arms on his
+breast, appeared to meditate profoundly.  His face, shaded softly by the
+broad brim of a planter's Panama hat, with the straight line of the nose
+level with the forehead, the eyes lost in the depth of the setting, and
+the chin well forward, had such a profile as may be seen amongst the
+bronzes of classical museums, pure under a crested helmet--recalled
+vaguely a Minerva's head.
+
+"This is the most troublesome time I ever had in my life," exclaimed the
+professor testily.
+
+"Surely the man must be worth it," muttered Renouard with a pang of
+jealousy traversing his breast like a self-inflicted stab.
+
+Whether enervated by the heat or giving way to pent up irritation the
+professor surrendered himself to the mood of sincerity.
+
+"He began by being a pleasantly dull boy.  He developed into a
+pointlessly clever young man, without, I suspect, ever trying to
+understand anything.  My daughter knew him from childhood.  I am a busy
+man, and I confess that their engagement was a complete surprise to me.
+I wish their reasons for that step had been more naive.  But simplicity
+was out of fashion in their set.  From a worldly point of view he seems
+to have been a mere baby.  Of course, now, I am assured that he is the
+victim of his noble confidence in the rectitude of his kind.  But that's
+mere idealising of a sad reality.  For my part I will tell you that from
+the very beginning I had the gravest doubts of his dishonesty.
+Unfortunately my clever daughter hadn't.  And now we behold the reaction.
+No.  To be earnestly dishonest one must be really poor.  This was only a
+manifestation of his extremely refined cleverness.  The complicated
+simpleton.  He had an awful awakening though."
+
+In such words did Professor Moorsom give his "young friend" to understand
+the state of his feelings toward the lost man.  It was evident that the
+father of Miss Moorsom wished him to remain lost.  Perhaps the
+unprecedented heat of the season made him long for the cool spaces of the
+Pacific, the sweep of the ocean's free wind along the promenade decks,
+cumbered with long chairs, of a ship steaming towards the Californian
+coast.  To Renouard the philosopher appeared simply the most treacherous
+of fathers.  He was amazed.  But he was not at the end of his
+discoveries.
+
+"He may be dead," the professor murmured.
+
+"Why?  People don't die here sooner than in Europe.  If he had gone to
+hide in Italy, for instance, you wouldn't think of saying that."
+
+"Well!  And suppose he has become morally disintegrated.  You know he was
+not a strong personality," the professor suggested moodily.  "My
+daughter's future is in question here."
+
+Renouard thought that the love of such a woman was enough to pull any
+broken man together--to drag a man out of his grave.  And he thought this
+with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his
+astonishment.  At last he managed to stammer out a generous--
+
+"Oh!  Don't let us even suppose. . ."
+
+The professor struck in with a sadder accent than before--
+
+"It's good to be young.  And then you have been a man of action, and
+necessarily a believer in success.  But I have been looking too long at
+life not to distrust its surprises.  Age!  Age!  Here I stand before you
+a man full of doubts and hesitation--_spe lentus_, _timidus futuri_."
+
+He made a sign to Renouard not to interrupt, and in a lowered voice, as
+if afraid of being overheard, even there, in the solitude of the
+terrace--
+
+"And the worst is that I am not even sure how far this sentimental
+pilgrimage is genuine.  Yes.  I doubt my own child.  It's true that she's
+a woman. . . . "
+
+Renouard detected with horror a tone of resentment, as if the professor
+had never forgiven his daughter for not dying instead of his son.  The
+latter noticed the young man's stony stare.
+
+"Ah! you don't understand.  Yes, she's clever, open-minded, popular,
+and--well, charming.  But you don't know what it is to have moved,
+breathed, existed, and even triumphed in the mere smother and froth of
+life--the brilliant froth.  There thoughts, sentiments, opinions,
+feelings, actions too, are nothing but agitation in empty space--to amuse
+life--a sort of superior debauchery, exciting and fatiguing, meaning
+nothing, leading nowhere.  She is the creature of that circle.  And I ask
+myself if she is obeying the uneasiness of an instinct seeking its
+satisfaction, or is it a revulsion of feeling, or is she merely deceiving
+her own heart by this dangerous trifling with romantic images.  And
+everything is possible--except sincerity, such as only stark, struggling
+humanity can know.  No woman can stand that mode of life in which women
+rule, and remain a perfectly genuine, simple human being.  Ah!  There's
+some people coming out."
+
+He moved off a pace, then turning his head: "Upon my word!  I would be
+infinitely obliged to you if you could throw a little cold water. . . "
+and at a vaguely dismayed gesture of Renouard, he added: "Don't be
+afraid.  You wouldn't be putting out a sacred fire."
+
+Renouard could hardly find words for a protest: "I assure you that I
+never talk with Miss Moorsom--on--on--that.  And if you, her father . . .
+"
+
+"I envy you your innocence," sighed the professor.  "A father is only an
+everyday person.  Flat.  Stale.  Moreover, my child would naturally
+mistrust me.  We belong to the same set.  Whereas you carry with you the
+prestige of the unknown.  You have proved yourself to be a force."
+
+Thereupon the professor followed by Renouard joined the circle of all the
+inmates of the house assembled at the other end of the terrace about a
+tea-table; three white heads and that resplendent vision of woman's
+glory, the sight of which had the power to flutter his heart like a
+reminder of the mortality of his frame.
+
+He avoided the seat by the side of Miss Moorsom.  The others were talking
+together languidly.  Unnoticed he looked at that woman so marvellous that
+centuries seemed to lie between them.  He was oppressed and overcome at
+the thought of what she could give to some man who really would be a
+force!  What a glorious struggle with this amazon.  What noble burden for
+the victorious strength.
+
+Dear old Mrs. Dunster was dispensing tea, looking from time to time with
+interest towards Miss Moorsom.  The aged statesman having eaten a raw
+tomato and drunk a glass of milk (a habit of his early farming days, long
+before politics, when, pioneer of wheat-growing, he demonstrated the
+possibility of raising crops on ground looking barren enough to
+discourage a magician), smoothed his white beard, and struck lightly
+Renouard's knee with his big wrinkled hand.
+
+"You had better come back to-night and dine with us quietly."
+
+He liked this young man, a pioneer, too, in more than one direction.
+Mrs. Dunster added: "Do.  It will be very quiet.  I don't even know if
+Willie will be home for dinner."  Renouard murmured his thanks, and left
+the terrace to go on board the schooner.  While lingering in the
+drawing-room doorway he heard the resonant voice of old Dunster uttering
+oracularly--
+
+". . . the leading man here some day. . . . Like me."
+
+Renouard let the thin summer portiere of the doorway fall behind him.
+The voice of Professor Moorsom said--
+
+"I am told that he has made an enemy of almost every man who had to work
+with him."
+
+"That's nothing.  He did his work. . . . Like me."
+
+"He never counted the cost they say.  Not even of lives."
+
+Renouard understood that they were talking of him.  Before he could move
+away, Mrs. Dunster struck in placidly--
+
+"Don't let yourself be shocked by the tales you may hear of him, my dear.
+Most of it is envy."
+
+Then he heard Miss Moorsom's voice replying to the old lady--
+
+"Oh!  I am not easily deceived.  I think I may say I have an instinct for
+truth."
+
+He hastened away from that house with his heart full of dread.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+On board the schooner, lying on the settee on his back with the knuckles
+of his hands pressed over his eyes, he made up his mind that he would not
+return to that house for dinner--that he would never go back there any
+more.  He made up his mind some twenty times.  The knowledge that he had
+only to go up on the quarter deck, utter quietly the words: "Man the
+windlass," and that the schooner springing into life would run a hundred
+miles out to sea before sunrise, deceived his struggling will.  Nothing
+easier!  Yet, in the end, this young man, almost ill-famed for his
+ruthless daring, the inflexible leader of two tragically successful
+expeditions, shrank from that act of savage energy, and began, instead,
+to hunt for excuses.
+
+No!  It was not for him to run away like an incurable who cuts his
+throat.  He finished dressing and looked at his own impassive face in the
+saloon mirror scornfully.  While being pulled on shore in the gig, he
+remembered suddenly the wild beauty of a waterfall seen when hardly more
+than a boy, years ago, in Menado.  There was a legend of a
+governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, on official tour, committing
+suicide on that spot by leaping into the chasm.  It was supposed that a
+painful disease had made him weary of life.  But was there ever a
+visitation like his own, at the same time binding one to life and so
+cruelly mortal!
+
+The dinner was indeed quiet.  Willie, given half an hour's grace, failed
+to turn up, and his chair remained vacant by the side of Miss Moorsom.
+Renouard had the professor's sister on his left, dressed in an expensive
+gown becoming her age.  That maiden lady in her wonderful preservation
+reminded Renouard somehow of a wax flower under glass.  There were no
+traces of the dust of life's battles on her anywhere.  She did not like
+him very much in the afternoons, in his white drill suit and planter's
+hat, which seemed to her an unduly Bohemian costume for calling in a
+house where there were ladies.  But in the evening, lithe and elegant in
+his dress clothes and with his pleasant, slightly veiled voice, he always
+made her conquest afresh.  He might have been anybody distinguished--the
+son of a duke.  Falling under that charm probably (and also because her
+brother had given her a hint), she attempted to open her heart to
+Renouard, who was watching with all the power of his soul her niece
+across the table.  She spoke to him as frankly as though that miserable
+mortal envelope, emptied of everything but hopeless passion, were indeed
+the son of a duke.
+
+Inattentive, he heard her only in snatches, till the final confidential
+burst: ". . . glad if you would express an opinion.  Look at her, so
+charming, such a great favourite, so generally admired!  It would be too
+sad.  We all hoped she would make a brilliant marriage with somebody very
+rich and of high position, have a house in London and in the country, and
+entertain us all splendidly.  She's so eminently fitted for it.  She has
+such hosts of distinguished friends!  And then--this instead! . . . My
+heart really aches."
+
+Her well-bred if anxious whisper was covered by the voice of professor
+Moorsom discoursing subtly down the short length of the dinner table on
+the Impermanency of the Measurable to his venerable disciple.  It might
+have been a chapter in a new and popular book of Moorsomian philosophy.
+Patriarchal and delighted, old Dunster leaned forward a little, his eyes
+shining youthfully, two spots of colour at the roots of his white beard;
+and Renouard, glancing at the senile excitement, recalled the words heard
+on those subtle lips, adopted their scorn for his own, saw their truth
+before this man ready to be amused by the side of the grave.  Yes!
+Intellectual debauchery in the froth of existence!  Froth and fraud!
+
+On the same side of the table Miss Moorsom never once looked towards her
+father, all her grace as if frozen, her red lips compressed, the faintest
+rosiness under her dazzling complexion, her black eyes burning
+motionless, and the very coppery gleams of light lying still on the waves
+and undulation of her hair.  Renouard fancied himself overturning the
+table, smashing crystal and china, treading fruit and flowers under foot,
+seizing her in his arms, carrying her off in a tumult of shrieks from all
+these people, a silent frightened mortal, into some profound retreat as
+in the age of Cavern men.  Suddenly everybody got up, and he hastened to
+rise too, finding himself out of breath and quite unsteady on his feet.
+
+On the terrace the philosopher, after lighting a cigar, slipped his hand
+condescendingly under his "dear young friend's" arm.  Renouard regarded
+him now with the profoundest mistrust.  But the great man seemed really
+to have a liking for his young friend--one of those mysterious
+sympathies, disregarding the differences of age and position, which in
+this case might have been explained by the failure of philosophy to meet
+a very real worry of a practical kind.
+
+After a turn or two and some casual talk the professor said suddenly: "My
+late son was in your school--do you know?  I can imagine that had he
+lived and you had ever met you would have understood each other.  He too
+was inclined to action."
+
+He sighed, then, shaking off the mournful thought and with a nod at the
+dusky part of the terrace where the dress of his daughter made a luminous
+stain: "I really wish you would drop in that quarter a few sensible,
+discouraging words."
+
+Renouard disengaged himself from that most perfidious of men under the
+pretence of astonishment, and stepping back a pace--
+
+"Surely you are making fun of me, Professor Moorsom," he said with a low
+laugh, which was really a sound of rage.
+
+"My dear young friend!  It's no subject for jokes, to me. . . You don't
+seem to have any notion of your prestige," he added, walking away towards
+the chairs.
+
+"Humbug!" thought Renouard, standing still and looking after him.  "And
+yet!  And yet!  What if it were true?"
+
+He advanced then towards Miss Moorsom.  Posed on the seat on which they
+had first spoken to each other, it was her turn to watch him coming on.
+But many of the windows were not lighted that evening.  It was dark over
+there.  She appeared to him luminous in her clear dress, a figure without
+shape, a face without features, awaiting his approach, till he got quite
+near to her, sat down, and they had exchanged a few insignificant words.
+Gradually she came out like a magic painting of charm, fascination, and
+desire, glowing mysteriously on the dark background.  Something
+imperceptible in the lines of her attitude, in the modulations of her
+voice, seemed to soften that suggestion of calm unconscious pride which
+enveloped her always like a mantle.  He, sensitive like a bond slave to
+the moods of the master, was moved by the subtle relenting of her grace
+to an infinite tenderness.  He fought down the impulse to seize her by
+the hand, lead her down into the garden away under the big trees, and
+throw himself at her feet uttering words of love.  His emotion was so
+strong that he had to cough slightly, and not knowing what to talk to her
+about he began to tell her of his mother and sisters.  All the family
+were coming to London to live there, for some little time at least.
+
+"I hope you will go and tell them something of me.  Something seen," he
+said pressingly.
+
+By this miserable subterfuge, like a man about to part with his life, he
+hoped to make her remember him a little longer.
+
+"Certainly," she said.  "I'll be glad to call when I get back.  But that
+'when' may be a long time."
+
+He heard a light sigh.  A cruel jealous curiosity made him ask--
+
+"Are you growing weary, Miss Moorsom?"
+
+A silence fell on his low spoken question.
+
+"Do you mean heart-weary?" sounded Miss Moorsom's voice.  "You don't know
+me, I see."
+
+"Ah!  Never despair," he muttered.
+
+"This, Mr. Renouard, is a work of reparation.  I stand for truth here.  I
+can't think of myself."
+
+He could have taken her by the throat for every word seemed an insult to
+his passion; but he only said--
+
+"I never doubted the--the--nobility of your purpose."
+
+"And to hear the word weariness pronounced in this connection surprises
+me.  And from a man too who, I understand, has never counted the cost."
+
+"You are pleased to tease me," he said, directly he had recovered his
+voice and had mastered his anger.  It was as if Professor Moorsom had
+dropped poison in his ear which was spreading now and tainting his
+passion, his very jealousy.  He mistrusted every word that came from
+those lips on which his life hung.  "How can you know anything of men who
+do not count the cost?" he asked in his gentlest tones.
+
+"From hearsay--a little."
+
+"Well, I assure you they are like the others, subject to suffering,
+victims of spells. . . ."
+
+"One of them, at least, speaks very strangely."
+
+She dismissed the subject after a short silence.  "Mr. Renouard, I had a
+disappointment this morning.  This mail brought me a letter from the
+widow of the old butler--you know.  I expected to learn that she had
+heard from--from here.  But no.  No letter arrived home since we left."
+
+Her voice was calm.  His jealousy couldn't stand much more of this sort
+of talk; but he was glad that nothing had turned up to help the search;
+glad blindly, unreasonably--only because it would keep her longer in his
+sight--since she wouldn't give up.
+
+"I am too near her," he thought, moving a little further on the seat.  He
+was afraid in the revulsion of feeling of flinging himself on her hands,
+which were lying on her lap, and covering them with kisses.  He was
+afraid.  Nothing, nothing could shake that spell--not if she were ever so
+false, stupid, or degraded.  She was fate itself.  The extent of his
+misfortune plunged him in such a stupor that he failed at first to hear
+the sound of voices and footsteps inside the drawing-room.  Willie had
+come home--and the Editor was with him.
+
+They burst out on the terrace babbling noisily, and then pulling
+themselves together stood still, surprising--and as if themselves
+surprised.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+They had been feasting a poet from the bush, the latest discovery of the
+Editor.  Such discoveries were the business, the vocation, the pride and
+delight of the only apostle of letters in the hemisphere, the solitary
+patron of culture, the Slave of the Lamp--as he subscribed himself at the
+bottom of the weekly literary page of his paper.  He had had no
+difficulty in persuading the virtuous Willie (who had festive instincts)
+to help in the good work, and now they had left the poet lying asleep on
+the hearthrug of the editorial room and had rushed to the Dunster mansion
+wildly.  The Editor had another discovery to announce.  Swaying a little
+where he stood he opened his mouth very wide to shout the one word
+"Found!"  Behind him Willie flung both his hands above his head and let
+them fall dramatically.  Renouard saw the four white-headed people at the
+end of the terrace rise all together from their chairs with an effect of
+sudden panic.
+
+"I tell you--he--is--found," the patron of letters shouted emphatically.
+
+"What is this!" exclaimed Renouard in a choked voice.  Miss Moorsom
+seized his wrist suddenly, and at that contact fire ran through all his
+veins, a hot stillness descended upon him in which he heard the blood--or
+the fire--beating in his ears.  He made a movement as if to rise, but was
+restrained by the convulsive pressure on his wrist.
+
+"No, no."  Miss Moorsom's eyes stared black as night, searching the space
+before her.  Far away the Editor strutted forward, Willie following with
+his ostentatious manner of carrying his bulky and oppressive carcass
+which, however, did not remain exactly perpendicular for two seconds
+together.
+
+"The innocent Arthur . . . Yes.  We've got him," the Editor became very
+business-like.  "Yes, this letter has done it."
+
+He plunged into an inside pocket for it, slapped the scrap of paper with
+his open palm.  "From that old woman.  William had it in his pocket since
+this morning when Miss Moorsom gave it to him to show me.  Forgot all
+about it till an hour ago.  Thought it was of no importance.  Well, no!
+Not till it was properly read."
+
+Renouard and Miss Moorsom emerged from the shadows side by side, a
+well-matched couple, animated yet statuesque in their calmness and in
+their pallor.  She had let go his wrist.  On catching sight of Renouard
+the Editor exclaimed:
+
+"What--you here!" in a quite shrill voice.
+
+There came a dead pause.  All the faces had in them something dismayed
+and cruel.
+
+"He's the very man we want," continued the Editor.  "Excuse my
+excitement.  You are the very man, Renouard.  Didn't you tell me that
+your assistant called himself Walter?  Yes?  Thought so.  But here's that
+old woman--the butler's wife--listen to this.  She writes: All I can tell
+you, Miss, is that my poor husband directed his letters to the name of H.
+Walter."
+
+Renouard's violent but repressed exclamation was lost in a general murmur
+and shuffle of feet.  The Editor made a step forward, bowed with
+creditable steadiness.
+
+"Miss Moorsom, allow me to congratulate you from the bottom of my heart
+on the happy--er--issue. . . "
+
+"Wait," muttered Renouard irresolutely.
+
+The Editor jumped on him in the manner of their old friendship.  "Ah,
+you!  You are a fine fellow too.  With your solitary ways of life you
+will end by having no more discrimination than a savage.  Fancy living
+with a gentleman for months and never guessing.  A man, I am certain,
+accomplished, remarkable, out of the common, since he had been
+distinguished" (he bowed again) "by Miss Moorsom, whom we all admire."
+
+She turned her back on him.
+
+"I hope to goodness you haven't been leading him a dog's life, Geoffrey,"
+the Editor addressed his friend in a whispered aside.
+
+Renouard seized a chair violently, sat down, and propping his elbow on
+his knee leaned his head on his hand.  Behind him the sister of the
+professor looked up to heaven and wrung her hands stealthily.  Mrs.
+Dunster's hands were clasped forcibly under her chin, but she, dear soul,
+was looking sorrowfully at Willie.  The model nephew!  In this strange
+state!  So very much flushed!  The careful disposition of the thin hairs
+across Willie's bald spot was deplorably disarranged, and the spot itself
+was red and, as it were, steaming.
+
+"What's the matter, Geoffrey?"  The Editor seemed disconcerted by the
+silent attitudes round him, as though he had expected all these people to
+shout and dance.  "You have him on the island--haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes: I have him there," said Renouard, without looking up.
+
+"Well, then!"  The Editor looked helplessly around as if begging for
+response of some sort.  But the only response that came was very
+unexpected.  Annoyed at being left in the background, and also because
+very little drink made him nasty, the emotional Willie turned malignant
+all at once, and in a bibulous tone surprising in a man able to keep his
+balance so well--
+
+"Aha!  But you haven't got him here--not yet!" he sneered.  "No!  You
+haven't got him yet."
+
+This outrageous exhibition was to the Editor like the lash to a jaded
+horse.  He positively jumped.
+
+"What of that?  What do you mean?  We--haven't--got--him--here.  Of
+course he isn't here!  But Geoffrey's schooner is here.  She can be sent
+at once to fetch him here.  No!  Stay!  There's a better plan.  Why
+shouldn't you all sail over to Malata, professor?  Save time!  I am sure
+Miss Moorsom would prefer. . ."
+
+With a gallant flourish of his arm he looked for Miss Moorsom.  She had
+disappeared.  He was taken aback somewhat.
+
+"Ah!  H'm.  Yes. . . . Why not.  A pleasure cruise, delightful ship,
+delightful season, delightful errand, del . . . No!  There are no
+objections.  Geoffrey, I understand, has indulged in a bungalow three
+sizes too large for him.  He can put you all up.  It will be a pleasure
+for him.  It will be the greatest privilege.  Any man would be proud of
+being an agent of this happy reunion.  I am proud of the little part I've
+played.  He will consider it the greatest honour.  Geoff, my boy, you had
+better be stirring to-morrow bright and early about the preparations for
+the trip.  It would be criminal to lose a single day."
+
+He was as flushed as Willie, the excitement keeping up the effect of the
+festive dinner.  For a time Renouard, silent, as if he had not heard a
+word of all that babble, did not stir.  But when he got up it was to
+advance towards the Editor and give him such a hearty slap on the back
+that the plump little man reeled in his tracks and looked quite
+frightened for a moment.
+
+"You are a heaven-born discoverer and a first-rate manager. . . He's
+right.  It's the only way.  You can't resist the claim of sentiment, and
+you must even risk the voyage to Malata. . . " Renouard's voice sank.  "A
+lonely spot," he added, and fell into thought under all these eyes
+converging on him in the sudden silence.  His slow glance passed over all
+the faces in succession, remaining arrested on Professor Moorsom, stony
+eyed, a smouldering cigar in his fingers, and with his sister standing by
+his side.
+
+"I shall be infinitely gratified if you consent to come.  But, of course,
+you will.  We shall sail to-morrow evening then.  And now let me leave
+you to your happiness."
+
+He bowed, very grave, pointed suddenly his finger at Willie who was
+swaying about with a sleepy frown. . . . "Look at him.  He's overcome
+with happiness.  You had better put him to bed . . . " and disappeared
+while every head on the terrace was turned to Willie with varied
+expressions.
+
+Renouard ran through the house.  Avoiding the carriage road he fled down
+the steep short cut to the shore, where his gig was waiting.  At his loud
+shout the sleeping Kanakas jumped up.  He leaped in.  "Shove off.  Give
+way!" and the gig darted through the water.  "Give way!  Give way!"  She
+flew past the wool-clippers sleeping at their anchors each with the open
+unwinking eye of the lamp in the rigging; she flew past the flagship of
+the Pacific squadron, a great mass all dark and silent, heavy with the
+slumbers of five hundred men, and where the invisible sentries heard his
+urgent "Give way!  Give way!" in the night.  The Kanakas, panting, rose
+off the thwarts at every stroke.  Nothing could be fast enough for him!
+And he ran up the side of his schooner shaking the ladder noisily with
+his rush.
+
+On deck he stumbled and stood still.
+
+Wherefore this haste?  To what end, since he knew well before he started
+that he had a pursuer from whom there was no escape.
+
+As his foot touched the deck his will, his purpose he had been hurrying
+to save, died out within.  It had been nothing less than getting the
+schooner under-way, letting her vanish silently in the night from amongst
+these sleeping ships.  And now he was certain he could not do it.  It was
+impossible!  And he reflected that whether he lived or died such an act
+would lay him under a dark suspicion from which he shrank.  No, there was
+nothing to be done.
+
+He went down into the cabin and, before even unbuttoning his overcoat,
+took out of the drawer the letter addressed to his assistant; that letter
+which he had found in the pigeon-hole labelled "Malata" in young
+Dunster's outer office, where it had been waiting for three months some
+occasion for being forwarded.  From the moment of dropping it in the
+drawer he had utterly forgotten its existence--till now, when the man's
+name had come out so clamorously.  He glanced at the common envelope,
+noted the shaky and laborious handwriting: H. Walter, Esqre.  Undoubtedly
+the very last letter the old butler had posted before his illness, and in
+answer clearly to one from "Master Arthur" instructing him to address in
+the future: "Care of Messrs. W. Dunster and Co."  Renouard made as if to
+open the envelope, but paused, and, instead, tore the letter deliberately
+in two, in four, in eight.  With his hand full of pieces of paper he
+returned on deck and scattered them overboard on the dark water, in which
+they vanished instantly.
+
+He did it slowly, without hesitation or remorse.  H. Walter, Esqre, in
+Malata.  The innocent Arthur--What was his name?  The man sought for by
+that woman who as she went by seemed to draw all the passion of the earth
+to her, without effort, not deigning to notice, naturally, as other women
+breathed the air.  But Renouard was no longer jealous of her very
+existence.  Whatever its meaning it was not for that man he had picked up
+casually on obscure impulse, to get rid of the tiresome expostulations of
+a so-called friend; a man of whom he really knew nothing--and now a dead
+man.  In Malata.  Oh, yes!  He was there secure enough, untroubled in his
+grave.  In Malata.  To bury him was the last service Renouard had
+rendered to his assistant before leaving the island on this trip to town.
+
+Like many men ready enough for arduous enterprises Renouard was inclined
+to evade the small complications of existence.  This trait of his
+character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a
+shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity--like a man who
+would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad.  His intercourse
+with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without
+sympathy some young men get drawn into easily.  It had amused him rather
+to keep that "friend" in the dark about the fate of his assistant.
+Renouard had never needed other company than his own, for there was in
+him something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who is easily jarred.  He
+had said to himself that the all-knowing one would only preach again
+about the evils of solitude and worry his head off in favour of some
+forlornly useless protege of his.  Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor
+had irritated him and had closed his lips in sheer disgust.
+
+And now he contemplated the noose of consequences drawing tight around
+him.
+
+It was the memory of that diplomatic reticence which on the terrace had
+stiffled his first cry which would have told them all that the man sought
+for was not to be met on earth any more.  He shrank from the absurdity of
+hearing the all-knowing one, and not very sober at that, turning on him
+with righteous reproaches--
+
+"You never told me.  You gave me to understand that your assistant was
+alive, and now you say he's dead.  Which is it?  Were you lying then or
+are you lying now?"  No! the thought of such a scene was not to be borne.
+He had sat down appalled, thinking: "What shall I do now?"
+
+His courage had oozed out of him.  Speaking the truth meant the Moorsoms
+going away at once--while it seemed to him that he would give the last
+shred of his rectitude to secure a day more of her company.  He sat
+on--silent.  Slowly, from confused sensations, from his talk with the
+professor, the manner of the girl herself, the intoxicating familiarity
+of her sudden hand-clasp, there had come to him a half glimmer of hope.
+The other man was dead.  Then! . . . Madness, of course--but he could not
+give it up.  He had listened to that confounded busybody arranging
+everything--while all these people stood around assenting, under the
+spell of that dead romance.  He had listened scornful and silent.  The
+glimmers of hope, of opportunity, passed before his eyes.  He had only to
+sit still and say nothing.  That and no more.  And what was truth to him
+in the face of that great passion which had flung him prostrate in spirit
+at her adored feet!
+
+And now it was done!  Fatality had willed it!  With the eyes of a mortal
+struck by the maddening thunderbolt of the gods, Renouard looked up to
+the sky, an immense black pall dusted over with gold, on which great
+shudders seemed to pass from the breath of life affirming its sway.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+At last, one morning, in a clear spot of a glassy horizon charged with
+heraldic masses of black vapours, the island grew out from the sea,
+showing here and there its naked members of basaltic rock through the
+rents of heavy foliage.  Later, in the great spilling of all the riches
+of sunset, Malata stood out green and rosy before turning into a violet
+shadow in the autumnal light of the expiring day.  Then came the night.
+In the faint airs the schooner crept on past a sturdy squat headland, and
+it was pitch dark when her headsails ran down, she turned short on her
+heel, and her anchor bit into the sandy bottom on the edge of the outer
+reef; for it was too dangerous then to attempt entering the little bay
+full of shoals.  After the last solemn flutter of the mainsail the
+murmuring voices of the Moorsom party lingered, very frail, in the black
+stillness.
+
+They were sitting aft, on chairs, and nobody made a move.  Early in the
+day, when it had become evident that the wind was failing, Renouard,
+basing his advice on the shortcomings of his bachelor establishment, had
+urged on the ladies the advisability of not going ashore in the middle of
+the night.  Now he approached them in a constrained manner (it was
+astonishing the constraint that had reigned between him and his guests
+all through the passage) and renewed his arguments.  No one ashore would
+dream of his bringing any visitors with him.  Nobody would even think of
+coming off.  There was only one old canoe on the plantation.  And landing
+in the schooner's boats would be awkward in the dark.  There was the risk
+of getting aground on some shallow patches.  It would be best to spend
+the rest of the night on board.
+
+There was really no opposition.  The professor smoking a pipe, and very
+comfortable in an ulster buttoned over his tropical clothes, was the
+first to speak from his long chair.
+
+"Most excellent advice."
+
+Next to him Miss Moorsom assented by a long silence.  Then in a voice as
+of one coming out of a dream--
+
+"And so this is Malata," she said.  "I have often wondered . . ."
+
+A shiver passed through Renouard.  She had wondered!  What about?  Malata
+was himself.  He and Malata were one.  And she had wondered!  She had . . .
+
+The professor's sister leaned over towards Renouard.  Through all these
+days at sea the man's--the found man's--existence had not been alluded to
+on board the schooner.  That reticence was part of the general constraint
+lying upon them all.  She, herself, certainly had not been exactly elated
+by this finding--poor Arthur, without money, without prospects.  But she
+felt moved by the sentiment and romance of the situation.
+
+"Isn't it wonderful," she whispered out of her white wrap, "to think of
+poor Arthur sleeping there, so near to our dear lovely Felicia, and not
+knowing the immense joy in store for him to-morrow."
+
+There was such artificiality in the wax-flower lady that nothing in this
+speech touched Renouard.  It was but the simple anxiety of his heart that
+he was voicing when he muttered gloomily--
+
+"No one in the world knows what to-morrow may hold in store."
+
+The mature lady had a recoil as though he had said something impolite.
+What a harsh thing to say--instead of finding something nice and
+appropriate.  On board, where she never saw him in evening clothes,
+Renouard's resemblance to a duke's son was not so apparent to her.
+Nothing but his--ah--bohemianism remained.  She rose with a sort of
+ostentation.
+
+"It's late--and since we are going to sleep on board to-night . . ." she
+said.  "But it does seem so cruel."
+
+The professor started up eagerly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.
+"Infinitely more sensible, my dear Emma."
+
+Renouard waited behind Miss Moorsom's chair.
+
+She got up slowly, moved one step forward, and paused looking at the
+shore.  The blackness of the island blotted out the stars with its vague
+mass like a low thundercloud brooding over the waters and ready to burst
+into flame and crashes.
+
+"And so--this is Malata," she repeated dreamily, moving towards the cabin
+door.  The clear cloak hanging from her shoulders, the ivory face--for
+the night had put out nothing of her but the gleams of her hair--made her
+resemble a shining dream-woman uttering words of wistful inquiry.  She
+disappeared without a sign, leaving Renouard penetrated to the very
+marrow by the sounds that came from her body like a mysterious resonance
+of an exquisite instrument.
+
+He stood stock still.  What was this accidental touch which had evoked
+the strange accent of her voice?  He dared not answer that question.  But
+he had to answer the question of what was to be done now.  Had the moment
+of confession come?  The thought was enough to make one's blood run cold.
+
+It was as if those people had a premonition of something.  In the
+taciturn days of the passage he had noticed their reserve even amongst
+themselves.  The professor smoked his pipe moodily in retired spots.
+Renouard had caught Miss Moorsom's eyes resting on himself more than
+once, with a peculiar and grave expression.  He fancied that she avoided
+all opportunities of conversation.  The maiden lady seemed to nurse a
+grievance.  And now what had he to do?
+
+The lights on the deck had gone out one after the other.  The schooner
+slept.
+
+About an hour after Miss Moorsom had gone below without a sign or a word
+for him, Renouard got out of his hammock slung in the waist under the
+midship awning--for he had given up all the accommodation below to his
+guests.  He got out with a sudden swift movement, flung off his sleeping
+jacket, rolled his pyjamas up his thighs, and stole forward, unseen by
+the one Kanaka of the anchor-watch.  His white torso, naked like a
+stripped athlete's, glimmered, ghostly, in the deep shadows of the deck.
+Unnoticed he got out of the ship over the knight-heads, ran along the
+back rope, and seizing the dolphin-striker firmly with both hands,
+lowered himself into the sea without a splash.
+
+He swam away, noiseless like a fish, and then struck boldly for the land,
+sustained, embraced, by the tepid water.  The gentle, voluptuous heave of
+its breast swung him up and down slightly; sometimes a wavelet murmured
+in his ears; from time to time, lowering his feet, he felt for the bottom
+on a shallow patch to rest and correct his direction.  He landed at the
+lower end of the bungalow garden, into the dead stillness of the island.
+There were no lights.  The plantation seemed to sleep, as profoundly as
+the schooner.  On the path a small shell cracked under his naked heel.
+
+The faithful half-caste foreman going his rounds cocked his ears at the
+sharp sound.  He gave one enormous start of fear at the sight of the
+swift white figure flying at him out of the night.  He crouched in
+terror, and then sprang up and clicked his tongue in amazed recognition.
+
+"Tse!  Tse!  The master!"
+
+"Be quiet, Luiz, and listen to what I say."
+
+Yes, it was the master, the strong master who was never known to raise
+his voice, the man blindly obeyed and never questioned.  He talked low
+and rapidly in the quiet night, as if every minute were precious.  On
+learning that three guests were coming to stay Luiz clicked his tongue
+rapidly.  These clicks were the uniform, stenographic symbols of his
+emotions, and he could give them an infinite variety of meaning.  He
+listened to the rest in a deep silence hardly affected by the low, "Yes,
+master," whenever Renouard paused.
+
+"You understand?" the latter insisted.  "No preparations are to be made
+till we land in the morning.  And you are to say that Mr. Walter has gone
+off in a trading schooner on a round of the islands."
+
+"Yes, master."
+
+"No mistakes--mind!"
+
+"No, master."
+
+Renouard walked back towards the sea.  Luiz, following him, proposed to
+call out half a dozen boys and man the canoe.
+
+"Imbecile!"
+
+"Tse!  Tse!  Tse!"
+
+"Don't you understand that you haven't seen me?"
+
+"Yes, master.  But what a long swim.  Suppose you drown."
+
+"Then you can say of me and of Mr. Walter what you like.  The dead don't
+mind."
+
+Renouard entered the sea and heard a faint "Tse! Tse! Tse!" of concern
+from the half-caste, who had already lost sight of the master's dark head
+on the overshadowed water.
+
+Renouard set his direction by a big star that, dipping on the horizon,
+seemed to look curiously into his face.  On this swim back he felt the
+mournful fatigue of all that length of the traversed road, which brought
+him no nearer to his desire.  It was as if his love had sapped the
+invisible supports of his strength.  There came a moment when it seemed
+to him that he must have swum beyond the confines of life.  He had a
+sensation of eternity close at hand, demanding no effort--offering its
+peace.  It was easy to swim like this beyond the confines of life looking
+at a star.  But the thought: "They will think I dared not face them and
+committed suicide," caused a revolt of his mind which carried him on.  He
+returned on board, as he had left, unheard and unseen.  He lay in his
+hammock utterly exhausted and with a confused feeling that he had been
+beyond the confines of life, somewhere near a star, and that it was very
+quiet there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Sheltered by the squat headland from the first morning sparkle of the sea
+the little bay breathed a delicious freshness.  The party from the
+schooner landed at the bottom of the garden.  They exchanged
+insignificant words in studiously casual tones.  The professor's sister
+put up a long-handled eye-glass as if to scan the novel surroundings, but
+in reality searching for poor Arthur anxiously.  Having never seen him
+otherwise than in his town clothes she had no idea what he would look
+like.  It had been left to the professor to help his ladies out of the
+boat because Renouard, as if intent on giving directions, had stepped
+forward at once to meet the half-caste Luiz hurrying down the path.  In
+the distance, in front of the dazzlingly sunlit bungalow, a row of
+dark-faced house-boys unequal in stature and varied in complexion
+preserved the immobility of a guard of honour.
+
+Luiz had taken off his soft felt hat before coming within earshot.
+Renouard bent his head to his rapid talk of domestic arrangements he
+meant to make for the visitors; another bed in the master's room for the
+ladies and a cot for the gentleman to be hung in the room opposite
+where--where Mr. Walter--here he gave a scared look all round--Mr.
+Walter--had died.
+
+"Very good," assented Renouard in an even undertone.  "And remember what
+you have to say of him."
+
+"Yes, master.  Only"--he wriggled slightly and put one bare foot on the
+other for a moment in apologetic embarrassment--"only I--I--don't like to
+say it."
+
+Renouard looked at him without anger, without any sort of expression.
+"Frightened of the dead?  Eh?  Well--all right.  I will say it myself--I
+suppose once for all. . . ."  Immediately he raised his voice very much.
+
+"Send the boys down to bring up the luggage."
+
+"Yes, master."
+
+Renouard turned to his distinguished guests who, like a personally
+conducted party of tourists, had stopped and were looking about them.
+
+"I am sorry," he began with an impassive face.  "My man has just told me
+that Mr. Walter . . ." he managed to smile, but didn't correct himself . . .
+"has gone in a trading schooner on a short tour of the islands, to
+the westward."
+
+This communication was received in profound silence.
+
+Renouard forgot himself in the thought: "It's done!"  But the sight of
+the string of boys marching up to the house with suit-cases and
+dressing-bags rescued him from that appalling abstraction.
+
+"All I can do is to beg you to make yourselves at home . . . with what
+patience you may."
+
+This was so obviously the only thing to do that everybody moved on at
+once.  The professor walked alongside Renouard, behind the two ladies.
+
+"Rather unexpected--this absence."
+
+"Not exactly," muttered Renouard.  "A trip has to be made every year to
+engage labour."
+
+"I see . . . And he . . . How vexingly elusive the poor fellow has
+become!  I'll begin to think that some wicked fairy is favouring this
+love tale with unpleasant attentions."
+
+Renouard noticed that the party did not seem weighed down by this new
+disappointment.  On the contrary they moved with a freer step.  The
+professor's sister dropped her eye-glass to the end of its chain.  Miss
+Moorsom took the lead.  The professor, his lips unsealed, lingered in the
+open: but Renouard did not listen to that man's talk.  He looked after
+that man's daughter--if indeed that creature of irresistible seductions
+were a daughter of mortals.  The very intensity of his desire, as if his
+soul were streaming after her through his eyes, defeated his object of
+keeping hold of her as long as possible with, at least, one of his
+senses.  Her moving outlines dissolved into a misty coloured shimmer of a
+woman made of flame and shadows, crossing the threshold of his house.
+
+The days which followed were not exactly such as Renouard had feared--yet
+they were not better than his fears.  They were accursed in all the moods
+they brought him.  But the general aspect of things was quiet.  The
+professor smoked innumerable pipes with the air of a worker on his
+holiday, always in movement and looking at things with that mysteriously
+sagacious aspect of men who are admittedly wiser than the rest of the
+world.  His white head of hair--whiter than anything within the horizon
+except the broken water on the reefs--was glimpsed in every part of the
+plantation always on the move under the white parasol.  And once he
+climbed the headland and appeared suddenly to those below, a white speck
+elevated in the blue, with a diminutive but statuesque effect.
+
+Felicia Moorsom remained near the house.  Sometimes she could be seen
+with a despairing expression scribbling rapidly in her lock-up dairy.
+But only for a moment.  At the sound of Renouard's footsteps she would
+turn towards him her beautiful face, adorable in that calm which was like
+a wilful, like a cruel ignoring of her tremendous power.  Whenever she
+sat on the verandah, on a chair more specially reserved for her use,
+Renouard would stroll up and sit on the steps near her, mostly silent,
+and often not trusting himself to turn his glance on her.  She, very
+still with her eyes half-closed, looked down on his head--so that to a
+beholder (such as Professor Moorsom, for instance) she would appear to be
+turning over in her mind profound thoughts about that man sitting at her
+feet, his shoulders bowed a little, his hands listless--as if vanquished.
+And, indeed, the moral poison of falsehood has such a decomposing power
+that Renouard felt his old personality turn to dead dust.  Often, in the
+evening, when they sat outside conversing languidly in the dark, he felt
+that he must rest his forehead on her feet and burst into tears.
+
+The professor's sister suffered from some little strain caused by the
+unstability of her own feelings toward Renouard.  She could not tell
+whether she really did dislike him or not.  At times he appeared to her
+most fascinating; and, though he generally ended by saying something
+shockingly crude, she could not resist her inclination to talk with
+him--at least not always.  One day when her niece had left them alone on
+the verandah she leaned forward in her chair--speckless, resplendent,
+and, in her way, almost as striking a personality as her niece, who did
+not resemble her in the least.  "Dear Felicia has inherited her hair and
+the greatest part of her appearance from her mother," the maiden lady
+used to tell people.
+
+She leaned forward then, confidentially.
+
+"Oh!  Mr. Renouard!  Haven't you something comforting to say?"
+
+He looked up, as surprised as if a voice from heaven had spoken with this
+perfect society intonation, and by the puzzled profundity of his blue
+eyes fluttered the wax-flower of refined womanhood.  She continued.
+"For--I can speak to you openly on this tiresome subject--only think what
+a terrible strain this hope deferred must be for Felicia's heart--for her
+nerves."
+
+"Why speak to me about it," he muttered feeling half choked suddenly.
+
+"Why!  As a friend--a well-wisher--the kindest of hosts.  I am afraid we
+are really eating you out of house and home."  She laughed a little.
+"Ah!  When, when will this suspense be relieved!  That poor lost Arthur!
+I confess that I am almost afraid of the great moment.  It will be like
+seeing a ghost."
+
+"Have you ever seen a ghost?" asked Renouard, in a dull voice.
+
+She shifted her hands a little.  Her pose was perfect in its ease and
+middle-aged grace.
+
+"Not actually.  Only in a photograph.  But we have many friends who had
+the experience of apparitions."
+
+"Ah!  They see ghosts in London," mumbled Renouard, not looking at her.
+
+"Frequently--in a certain very interesting set.  But all sorts of people
+do.  We have a friend, a very famous author--his ghost is a girl.  One of
+my brother's intimates is a very great man of science.  He is friendly
+with a ghost . . . Of a girl too," she added in a voice as if struck for
+the first time by the coincidence.  "It is the photograph of that
+apparition which I have seen.  Very sweet.  Most interesting.  A little
+cloudy naturally. . . . Mr. Renouard!  I hope you are not a sceptic.
+It's so consoling to think. . ."
+
+"Those plantation boys of mine see ghosts too," said Renouard grimly.
+
+The sister of the philosopher sat up stiffly.  What crudeness!  It was
+always so with this strange young man.
+
+"Mr. Renouard!  How can you compare the superstitious fancies of your
+horrible savages with the manifestations . . . "
+
+Words failed her.  She broke off with a very faint primly angry smile.
+She was perhaps the more offended with him because of that flutter at the
+beginning of the conversation.  And in a moment with perfect tact and
+dignity she got up from her chair and left him alone.
+
+Renouard didn't even look up.  It was not the displeasure of the lady
+which deprived him of his sleep that night.  He was beginning to forget
+what simple, honest sleep was like.  His hammock from the ship had been
+hung for him on a side verandah, and he spent his nights in it on his
+back, his hands folded on his chest, in a sort of half conscious,
+oppressed stupor.  In the morning he watched with unseeing eyes the
+headland come out a shapeless inkblot against the thin light of the false
+dawn, pass through all the stages of daybreak to the deep purple of its
+outlined mass nimbed gloriously with the gold of the rising sun.  He
+listened to the vague sounds of waking within the house: and suddenly he
+became aware of Luiz standing by the hammock--obviously troubled.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Tse!  Tse!  Tse!"
+
+"Well, what now?  Trouble with the boys?"
+
+"No, master.  The gentleman when I take him his bath water he speak to
+me.  He ask me--he ask--when, when, I think Mr. Walter, he come back."
+
+The half-caste's teeth chattered slightly.  Renouard got out of the
+hammock.
+
+"And he is here all the time--eh?"
+
+Luiz nodded a scared affirmative, but at once protested, "I no see him.
+I never.  Not I!  The ignorant wild boys say they see . . . Something!
+Ough!"
+
+He clapped his teeth on another short rattle, and stood there, shrunk,
+blighted, like a man in a freezing blast.
+
+"And what did you say to the gentleman?"
+
+"I say I don't know--and I clear out.  I--I don't like to speak of him."
+
+"All right.  We shall try to lay that poor ghost," said Renouard
+gloomily, going off to a small hut near by to dress.  He was saying to
+himself: "This fellow will end by giving me away.  The last thing that I
+. . . No!  That mustn't be."  And feeling his hand being forced he
+discovered the whole extent of his cowardice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+That morning wandering about his plantation, more like a frightened soul
+than its creator and master, he dodged the white parasol bobbing up here
+and there like a buoy adrift on a sea of dark-green plants.  The crop
+promised to be magnificent, and the fashionable philosopher of the age
+took other than a merely scientific interest in the experiment.  His
+investments were judicious, but he had always some little money lying by,
+for experiments.
+
+After lunch, being left alone with Renouard, he talked a little of
+cultivation and such matters.  Then suddenly:
+
+"By the way, is it true what my sister tells me, that your plantation
+boys have been disturbed by a ghost?"
+
+Renouard, who since the ladies had left the table was not keeping such a
+strict watch on himself, came out of his abstraction with a start and a
+stiff smile.
+
+"My foreman had some trouble with them during my absence.  They funk
+working in a certain field on the slope of the hill."
+
+"A ghost here!" exclaimed the amused professor.  "Then our whole
+conception of the psychology of ghosts must be revised.  This island has
+been uninhabited probably since the dawn of ages.  How did a ghost come
+here.  By air or water?  And why did it leave its native haunts.  Was it
+from misanthropy?  Was he expelled from some community of spirits?"
+
+Renouard essayed to respond in the same tone.  The words died on his
+lips.  Was it a man or a woman ghost, the professor inquired.
+
+"I don't know."  Renouard made an effort to appear at ease.  He had, he
+said, a couple of Tahitian amongst his boys--a ghost-ridden race.  They
+had started the scare.  They had probably brought their ghost with them.
+
+"Let us investigate the matter, Renouard," proposed the professor half in
+earnest.  "We may make some interesting discoveries as to the state of
+primitive minds, at any rate."
+
+This was too much.  Renouard jumped up and leaving the room went out and
+walked about in front of the house.  He would allow no one to force his
+hand.  Presently the professor joined him outside.  He carried his
+parasol, but had neither his book nor his pipe with him.  Amiably serious
+he laid his hand on his "dear young friend's" arm.
+
+"We are all of us a little strung up," he said.  "For my part I have been
+like sister Anne in the story.  But I cannot see anything coming.
+Anything that would be the least good for anybody--I mean."
+
+Renouard had recovered sufficiently to murmur coldly his regret of this
+waste of time.  For that was what, he supposed, the professor had in his
+mind.
+
+"Time," mused Professor Moorsom.  "I don't know that time can be wasted.
+But I will tell you, my dear friend, what this is: it is an awful waste
+of life.  I mean for all of us.  Even for my sister, who has got a
+headache and is gone to lie down."
+
+He shook gently Renouard's arm.  "Yes, for all of us!  One may meditate
+on life endlessly, one may even have a poor opinion of it--but the fact
+remains that we have only one life to live.  And it is short.  Think of
+that, my young friend."
+
+He released Renouard's arm and stepped out of the shade opening his
+parasol.  It was clear that there was something more in his mind than
+mere anxiety about the date of his lectures for fashionable audiences.
+What did the man mean by his confounded platitudes?  To Renouard, scared
+by Luiz in the morning (for he felt that nothing could be more fatal than
+to have his deception unveiled otherwise than by personal confession),
+this talk sounded like encouragement or a warning from that man who
+seemed to him to be very brazen and very subtle.  It was like being
+bullied by the dead and cajoled by the living into a throw of dice for a
+supreme stake.
+
+Renouard went away to some distance from the house and threw himself down
+in the shade of a tree.  He lay there perfectly still with his forehead
+resting on his folded arms, light-headed and thinking.  It seemed to him
+that he must be on fire, then that he had fallen into a cool whirlpool, a
+smooth funnel of water swirling about with nauseating rapidity.  And then
+(it must have been a reminiscence of his boyhood) he was walking on the
+dangerous thin ice of a river, unable to turn back. . . . Suddenly it
+parted from shore to shore with a loud crack like the report of a gun.
+
+With one leap he found himself on his feet.  All was peace, stillness,
+sunshine.  He walked away from there slowly.  Had he been a gambler he
+would have perhaps been supported in a measure by the mere excitement.
+But he was not a gambler.  He had always disdained that artificial manner
+of challenging the fates.  The bungalow came into view, bright and
+pretty, and all about everything was peace, stillness, sunshine. . . .
+
+While he was plodding towards it he had a disagreeable sense of the dead
+man's company at his elbow.  The ghost!  He seemed to be everywhere but
+in his grave.  Could one ever shake him off? he wondered.  At that moment
+Miss Moorsom came out on the verandah; and at once, as if by a mystery of
+radiating waves, she roused a great tumult in his heart, shook earth and
+sky together--but he plodded on.  Then like a grave song-note in the
+storm her voice came to him ominously.
+
+"Ah!  Mr. Renouard. . . "  He came up and smiled, but she was very
+serious.  "I can't keep still any longer.  Is there time to walk up this
+headland and back before dark?"
+
+The shadows were lying lengthened on the ground; all was stillness and
+peace.  "No," said Renouard, feeling suddenly as steady as a rock.  "But
+I can show you a view from the central hill which your father has not
+seen.  A view of reefs and of broken water without end, and of great
+wheeling clouds of sea-birds."
+
+She came down the verandah steps at once and they moved off.  "You go
+first," he proposed, "and I'll direct you.  To the left."
+
+She was wearing a short nankin skirt, a muslin blouse; he could see
+through the thin stuff the skin of her shoulders, of her arms.  The noble
+delicacy of her neck caused him a sort of transport.  "The path begins
+where these three palms are.  The only palms on the island."
+
+"I see."
+
+She never turned her head.  After a while she observed: "This path looks
+as if it had been made recently."
+
+"Quite recently," he assented very low.
+
+They went on climbing steadily without exchanging another word; and when
+they stood on the top she gazed a long time before her.  The low evening
+mist veiled the further limit of the reefs.  Above the enormous and
+melancholy confusion, as of a fleet of wrecked islands, the restless
+myriads of sea-birds rolled and unrolled dark ribbons on the sky,
+gathered in clouds, soared and stooped like a play of shadows, for they
+were too far for them to hear their cries.
+
+Renouard broke the silence in low tones.
+
+"They'll be settling for the night presently."  She made no sound.  Round
+them all was peace and declining sunshine.  Near by, the topmost pinnacle
+of Malata, resembling the top of a buried tower, rose a rock,
+weather-worn, grey, weary of watching the monotonous centuries of the
+Pacific.  Renouard leaned his shoulders against it.  Felicia Moorsom
+faced him suddenly, her splendid black eyes full on his face as though
+she had made up her mind at last to destroy his wits once and for all.
+Dazzled, he lowered his eyelids slowly.
+
+"Mr. Renouard!  There is something strange in all this.  Tell me where he
+is?"
+
+He answered deliberately.
+
+"On the other side of this rock.  I buried him there myself."
+
+She pressed her hands to her breast, struggled for her breath for a
+moment, then: "Ohhh! . . . You buried him! . . . What sort of man are
+you? . . . You dared not tell! . . . He is another of your victims? . . .
+You dared not confess that evening. . . . You must have killed him.  What
+could he have done to you? . . . You fastened on him some atrocious
+quarrel and . . ."
+
+Her vengeful aspect, her poignant cries left him as unmoved as the weary
+rock against which he leaned.  He only raised his eyelids to look at her
+and lowered them slowly.  Nothing more.  It silenced her.  And as if
+ashamed she made a gesture with her hand, putting away from her that
+thought.  He spoke, quietly ironic at first.
+
+"Ha! the legendary Renouard of sensitive idiots--the ruthless
+adventurer--the ogre with a future.  That was a parrot cry, Miss Moorsom.
+I don't think that the greatest fool of them all ever dared hint such a
+stupid thing of me that I killed men for nothing.  No, I had noticed this
+man in a hotel.  He had come from up country I was told, and was doing
+nothing.  I saw him sitting there lonely in a corner like a sick crow,
+and I went over one evening to talk to him.  Just on impulse.  He wasn't
+impressive.  He was pitiful.  My worst enemy could have told you he
+wasn't good enough to be one of Renouard's victims.  It didn't take me
+long to judge that he was drugging himself.  Not drinking.  Drugs."
+
+"Ah!  It's now that you are trying to murder him," she cried.
+
+"Really.  Always the Renouard of shopkeepers' legend.  Listen!  I would
+never have been jealous of him.  And yet I am jealous of the air you
+breathe, of the soil you tread on, of the world that sees you--moving
+free--not mine.  But never mind.  I rather liked him.  For a certain
+reason I proposed he should come to be my assistant here.  He said he
+believed this would save him.  It did not save him from death.  It came
+to him as it were from nothing--just a fall.  A mere slip and tumble of
+ten feet into a ravine.  But it seems he had been hurt before
+up-country--by a horse.  He ailed and ailed.  No, he was not a
+steel-tipped man.  And his poor soul seemed to have been damaged too.  It
+gave way very soon."
+
+"This is tragic!" Felicia Moorsom whispered with feeling.  Renouard's
+lips twitched, but his level voice continued mercilessly.
+
+"That's the story.  He rallied a little one night and said he wanted to
+tell me something.  I, being a gentleman, he said, he could confide in
+me.  I told him that he was mistaken.  That there was a good deal of a
+plebeian in me, that he couldn't know.  He seemed disappointed.  He
+muttered something about his innocence and something that sounded like a
+curse on some woman, then turned to the wall and--just grew cold."
+
+"On a woman," cried Miss Moorsom indignantly.  "What woman?"
+
+"I wonder!" said Renouard, raising his eyes and noting the crimson of her
+ear-lobes against the live whiteness of her complexion, the sombre, as if
+secret, night-splendour of her eyes under the writhing flames of her
+hair.  "Some woman who wouldn't believe in that poor innocence of his. . .
+Yes.  You probably.  And now you will not believe in me--not even in me
+who must in truth be what I am--even to death.  No!  You won't.  And yet,
+Felicia, a woman like you and a man like me do not often come together on
+this earth."
+
+The flame of her glorious head scorched his face.  He flung his hat far
+away, and his suddenly lowered eyelids brought out startlingly his
+resemblance to antique bronze, the profile of Pallas, still, austere,
+bowed a little in the shadow of the rock.  "Oh!  If you could only
+understand the truth that is in me!" he added.
+
+She waited, as if too astounded to speak, till he looked up again, and
+then with unnatural force as if defending herself from some unspoken
+aspersion, "It's I who stand for truth here!  Believe in you!  In you,
+who by a heartless falsehood--and nothing else, nothing else, do you
+hear?--have brought me here, deceived, cheated, as in some abominable
+farce!"  She sat down on a boulder, rested her chin in her hands, in the
+pose of simple grief--mourning for herself.
+
+"It only wanted this.  Why!  Oh!  Why is it that ugliness, ridicule, and
+baseness must fall across my path."
+
+On that height, alone with the sky, they spoke to each other as if the
+earth had fallen away from under their feet.
+
+"Are you grieving for your dignity?  He was a mediocre soul and could
+have given you but an unworthy existence."
+
+She did not even smile at those words, but, superb, as if lifting a
+corner of the veil, she turned on him slowly.
+
+"And do you imagine I would have devoted myself to him for such a
+purpose!  Don't you know that reparation was due to him from me?  A
+sacred debt--a fine duty.  To redeem him would not have been in my
+power--I know it.  But he was blameless, and it was for me to come
+forward.  Don't you see that in the eyes of the world nothing could have
+rehabilitated him so completely as his marriage with me?  No word of evil
+could be whispered of him after I had given him my hand.  As to giving
+myself up to anything less than the shaping of a man's destiny--if I
+thought I could do it I would abhor myself. . . ."  She spoke with
+authority in her deep fascinating, unemotional voice.  Renouard
+meditated, gloomy, as if over some sinister riddle of a beautiful sphinx
+met on the wild road of his life.
+
+"Yes.  Your father was right.  You are one of these aristocrats . . ."
+
+She drew herself up haughtily.
+
+"What do you say?  My father! . . . I an aristocrat."
+
+"Oh!  I don't mean that you are like the men and women of the time of
+armours, castles, and great deeds.  Oh, no!  They stood on the naked
+soil, had traditions to be faithful to, had their feet on this earth of
+passions and death which is not a hothouse.  They would have been too
+plebeian for you since they had to lead, to suffer with, to understand
+the commonest humanity.  No, you are merely of the topmost layer,
+disdainful and superior, the mere pure froth and bubble on the
+inscrutable depths which some day will toss you out of existence.  But
+you are you!  You are you!  You are the eternal love itself--only, O
+Divinity, it isn't your body, it is your soul that is made of foam."
+
+She listened as if in a dream.  He had succeeded so well in his effort to
+drive back the flood of his passion that his life itself seemed to run
+with it out of his body.  At that moment he felt as one dead speaking.
+But the headlong wave returning with tenfold force flung him on her
+suddenly, with open arms and blazing eyes.  She found herself like a
+feather in his grasp, helpless, unable to struggle, with her feet off the
+ground.  But this contact with her, maddening like too much felicity,
+destroyed its own end.  Fire ran through his veins, turned his passion to
+ashes, burnt him out and left him empty, without force--almost without
+desire.  He let her go before she could cry out.  And she was so used to
+the forms of repression enveloping, softening the crude impulses of old
+humanity that she no longer believed in their existence as if it were an
+exploded legend.  She did not recognise what had happened to her.  She
+came safe out of his arms, without a struggle, not even having felt
+afraid.
+
+"What's the meaning of this?" she said, outraged but calm in a scornful
+way.
+
+He got down on his knees in silence, bent low to her very feet, while she
+looked down at him, a little surprised, without animosity, as if merely
+curious to see what he would do.  Then, while he remained bowed to the
+ground pressing the hem of her skirt to his lips, she made a slight
+movement.  He got up.
+
+"No," he said.  "Were you ever so much mine what could I do with you
+without your consent?  No.  You don't conquer a wraith, cold mist, stuff
+of dreams, illusion.  It must come to you and cling to your breast.  And
+then!  Oh!  And then!"
+
+All ecstasy, all expression went out of his face.
+
+"Mr. Renouard," she said, "though you can have no claim on my
+consideration after having decoyed me here for the vile purpose,
+apparently, of gloating over me as your possible prey, I will tell you
+that I am not perhaps the extraordinary being you think I am.  You may
+believe me.  Here I stand for truth itself."
+
+"What's that to me what you are?" he answered.  "At a sign from you I
+would climb up to the seventh heaven to bring you down to earth for my
+own--and if I saw you steeped to the lips in vice, in crime, in mud, I
+would go after you, take you to my arms--wear you for an incomparable
+jewel on my breast.  And that's love--true love--the gift and the curse
+of the gods.  There is no other."
+
+The truth vibrating in his voice made her recoil slightly, for she was
+not fit to hear it--not even a little--not even one single time in her
+life.  It was revolting to her; and in her trouble, perhaps prompted by
+the suggestion of his name or to soften the harshness of expression, for
+she was obscurely moved, she spoke to him in French.
+
+"_Assez_!  _J'ai horreur de tout cela_," she said.
+
+He was white to his very lips, but he was trembling no more.  The dice
+had been cast, and not even violence could alter the throw.  She passed
+by him unbendingly, and he followed her down the path.  After a time she
+heard him saying:
+
+"And your dream is to influence a human destiny?"
+
+"Yes!" she answered curtly, unabashed, with a woman's complete assurance.
+
+"Then you may rest content.  You have done it."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders slightly.  But just before reaching the end of
+the path she relented, stopped, and went back to him.
+
+"I don't suppose you are very anxious for people to know how near you
+came to absolute turpitude.  You may rest easy on that point.  I shall
+speak to my father, of course, and we will agree to say that he has
+died--nothing more."
+
+"Yes," said Renouard in a lifeless voice.  "He is dead.  His very ghost
+shall be done with presently."
+
+She went on, but he remained standing stock still in the dusk.  She had
+already reached the three palms when she heard behind her a loud peal of
+laughter, cynical and joyless, such as is heard in smoking-rooms at the
+end of a scandalous story.  It made her feel positively faint for a
+moment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Slowly a complete darkness enveloped Geoffrey Renouard.  His resolution
+had failed him.  Instead of following Felicia into the house, he had
+stopped under the three palms, and leaning against a smooth trunk had
+abandoned himself to a sense of an immense deception and the feeling of
+extreme fatigue.  This walk up the hill and down again was like the
+supreme effort of an explorer trying to penetrate the interior of an
+unknown country, the secret of which is too well defended by its cruel
+and barren nature.  Decoyed by a mirage, he had gone too far--so far that
+there was no going back.  His strength was at an end.  For the first time
+in his life he had to give up, and with a sort of despairing
+self-possession he tried to understand the cause of the defeat.  He did
+not ascribe it to that absurd dead man.
+
+The hesitating shadow of Luiz approached him unnoticed till it spoke
+timidly.  Renouard started.
+
+"Eh?  What?  Dinner waiting?  You must say I beg to be excused.  I can't
+come.  But I shall see them to-morrow morning, at the landing place.
+Take your orders from the professor as to the sailing of the schooner.
+Go now."
+
+Luiz, dumbfounded, retreated into the darkness.  Renouard did not move,
+but hours afterwards, like the bitter fruit of his immobility, the words:
+"I had nothing to offer to her vanity," came from his lips in the silence
+of the island.  And it was then only that he stirred, only to wear the
+night out in restless tramping up and down the various paths of the
+plantation.  Luiz, whose sleep was made light by the consciousness of
+some impending change, heard footsteps passing by his hut, the firm tread
+of the master; and turning on his mats emitted a faint Tse! Tse! Tse! of
+deep concern.
+
+Lights had been burning in the bungalow almost all through the night; and
+with the first sign of day began the bustle of departure.  House boys
+walked processionally carrying suit-cases and dressing-bags down to the
+schooner's boat, which came to the landing place at the bottom of the
+garden.  Just as the rising sun threw its golden nimbus around the purple
+shape of the headland, the Planter of Malata was perceived pacing
+bare-headed the curve of the little bay.  He exchanged a few words with
+the sailing-master of the schooner, then remained by the boat, standing
+very upright, his eyes on the ground, waiting.
+
+He had not long to wait.  Into the cool, overshadowed garden the
+professor descended first, and came jauntily down the path in a lively
+cracking of small shells.  With his closed parasol hooked on his forearm,
+and a book in his hand, he resembled a banal tourist more than was
+permissible to a man of his unique distinction.  He waved the disengaged
+arm from a distance, but at close quarters, arrested before Renouard's
+immobility, he made no offer to shake hands.  He seemed to appraise the
+aspect of the man with a sharp glance, and made up his mind.
+
+"We are going back by Suez," he began almost boisterously.  "I have been
+looking up the sailing lists.  If the zephirs of your Pacific are only
+moderately propitious I think we are sure to catch the mail boat due in
+Marseilles on the 18th of March.  This will suit me excellently. . . ."
+He lowered his tone.  "My dear young friend, I'm deeply grateful to you."
+
+Renouard's set lips moved.
+
+"Why are you grateful to me?"
+
+"Ah!  Why?  In the first place you might have made us miss the next boat,
+mightn't you? . . . I don't thank you for your hospitality.  You can't be
+angry with me for saying that I am truly thankful to escape from it.  But
+I am grateful to you for what you have done, and--for being what you
+are."
+
+It was difficult to define the flavour of that speech, but Renouard
+received it with an austerely equivocal smile.  The professor stepping
+into the boat opened his parasol and sat down in the stern-sheets waiting
+for the ladies.  No sound of human voice broke the fresh silence of the
+morning while they walked the broad path, Miss Moorsom a little in
+advance of her aunt.
+
+When she came abreast of him Renouard raised his head.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Renouard," she said in a low voice, meaning to pass on;
+but there was such a look of entreaty in the blue gleam of his sunken
+eyes that after an imperceptible hesitation she laid her hand, which was
+ungloved, in his extended palm.
+
+"Will you condescend to remember me?" he asked, while an emotion with
+which she was angry made her pale cheeks flush and her black eyes
+sparkle.
+
+"This is a strange request for you to make," she said, exaggerating the
+coldness of her tone.
+
+"Is it?  Impudent perhaps.  Yet I am not so guilty as you think; and bear
+in mind that to me you can never make reparation."
+
+"Reparation?  To you!  It is you who can offer me no reparation for the
+offence against my feelings--and my person; for what reparation can be
+adequate for your odious and ridiculous plot so scornful in its
+implication, so humiliating to my pride.  No!  I don't want to remember
+you."
+
+Unexpectedly, with a tightening grip, he pulled her nearer to him, and
+looking into her eyes with fearless despair--
+
+"You'll have to.  I shall haunt you," he said firmly.
+
+Her hand was wrenched out of his grasp before he had time to release it.
+Felicia Moorsom stepped into the boat, sat down by the side of her
+father, and breathed tenderly on her crushed fingers.
+
+The professor gave her a sidelong look--nothing more.  But the
+professor's sister, yet on shore, had put up her long-handle double
+eye-glass to look at the scene.  She dropped it with a faint rattle.
+
+"I've never in my life heard anything so crude said to a lady," she
+murmured, passing before Renouard with a perfectly erect head.  When, a
+moment afterwards, softening suddenly, she turned to throw a good-bye to
+that young man, she saw only his back in the distance moving towards the
+bungalow.  She watched him go in--amazed--before she too left the soil of
+Malata.
+
+Nobody disturbed Renouard in that room where he had shut himself in to
+breathe the evanescent perfume of her who for him was no more, till late
+in the afternoon when the half-caste was heard on the other side of the
+door.
+
+He wanted the master to know that the trader _Janet_ was just entering
+the cove.
+
+Renouard's strong voice on his side of the door gave him most unexpected
+instructions.  He was to pay off the boys with the cash in the office and
+arrange with the captain of the _Janet_ to take every worker away from
+Malata, returning them to their respective homes.  An order on the
+Dunster firm would be given to him in payment.
+
+And again the silence of the bungalow remained unbroken till, next
+morning, the half-caste came to report that everything was done.  The
+plantation boys were embarking now.
+
+Through a crack in the door a hand thrust at him a piece of paper, and
+the door slammed to so sharply that Luiz stepped back.  Then approaching
+cringingly the keyhole, in a propitiatory tone he asked:
+
+"Do I go too, master?"
+
+"Yes.  You too.  Everybody."
+
+"Master stop here alone?"
+
+Silence.  And the half-caste's eyes grew wide with wonder.  But he also,
+like those "ignorant savages," the plantation boys, was only too glad to
+leave an island haunted by the ghost of a white man.  He backed away
+noiselessly from the mysterious silence in the closed room, and only in
+the very doorway of the bungalow allowed himself to give vent to his
+feelings by a deprecatory and pained--
+
+"Tse!  Tse!  Tse!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The Moorsoms did manage to catch the homeward mail boat all right, but
+had only twenty-four hours in town.  Thus the sentimental Willie could
+not see very much of them.  This did not prevent him afterwards from
+relating at great length, with manly tears in his eyes, how poor Miss
+Moorsom--the fashionable and clever beauty--found her betrothed in Malata
+only to see him die in her arms.  Most people were deeply touched by the
+sad story.  It was the talk of a good many days.
+
+But the all-knowing Editor, Renouard's only friend and crony, wanted to
+know more than the rest of the world.  From professional incontinence,
+perhaps, he thirsted for a full cup of harrowing detail.  And when he
+noticed Renouard's schooner lying in port day after day he sought the
+sailing master to learn the reason.  The man told him that such were his
+instructions.  He had been ordered to lie there a month before returning
+to Malata.  And the month was nearly up.  "I will ask you to give me a
+passage," said the Editor.
+
+He landed in the morning at the bottom of the garden and found peace,
+stillness, sunshine reigning everywhere, the doors and windows of the
+bungalow standing wide open, no sight of a human being anywhere, the
+plants growing rank and tall on the deserted fields.  For hours the
+Editor and the schooner's crew, excited by the mystery, roamed over the
+island shouting Renouard's name; and at last set themselves in grim
+silence to explore systematically the uncleared bush and the deeper
+ravines in search of his corpse.  What had happened?  Had he been
+murdered by the boys?  Or had he simply, capricious and secretive,
+abandoned his plantation taking the people with him.  It was impossible
+to tell what had happened.  At last, towards the decline of the day, the
+Editor and the sailing master discovered a track of sandals crossing a
+strip of sandy beach on the north shore of the bay.  Following this track
+fearfully, they passed round the spur of the headland, and there on a
+large stone found the sandals, Renouard's white jacket, and the Malay
+sarong of chequered pattern which the planter of Malata was well known to
+wear when going to bathe.  These things made a little heap, and the
+sailor remarked, after gazing at it in silence--
+
+"Birds have been hovering over this for many a day."
+
+"He's gone bathing and got drowned," cried the Editor in dismay.
+
+"I doubt it, sir.  If he had been drowned anywhere within a mile from the
+shore the body would have been washed out on the reefs.  And our boats
+have found nothing so far."
+
+Nothing was ever found--and Renouard's disappearance remained in the main
+inexplicable.  For to whom could it have occurred that a man would set
+out calmly to swim beyond the confines of life--with a steady stroke--his
+eyes fixed on a star!
+
+Next evening, from the receding schooner, the Editor looked back for the
+last time at the deserted island.  A black cloud hung listlessly over the
+high rock on the middle hill; and under the mysterious silence of that
+shadow Malata lay mournful, with an air of anguish in the wild sunset, as
+if remembering the heart that was broken there.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Dec._ 1913.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARTNER
+
+
+"And that be hanged for a silly yarn.  The boatmen here in Westport have
+been telling this lie to the summer visitors for years.  The sort that
+gets taken out for a row at a shilling a head--and asks foolish
+questions--must be told something to pass the time away.  D'ye know
+anything more silly than being pulled in a boat along a beach? . . . It's
+like drinking weak lemonade when you aren't thirsty.  I don't know why
+they do it!  They don't even get sick."
+
+A forgotten glass of beer stood at his elbow; the locality was a small
+respectable smoking-room of a small respectable hotel, and a taste for
+forming chance acquaintances accounts for my sitting up late with him.
+His great, flat, furrowed cheeks were shaven; a thick, square wisp of
+white hairs hung from his chin; its waggling gave additional point to his
+deep utterance; and his general contempt for mankind with its activities
+and moralities was expressed in the rakish set of his big soft hat of
+black felt with a large rim, which he kept always on his head.
+
+His appearance was that of an old adventurer, retired after many unholy
+experiences in the darkest parts of the earth; but I had every reason to
+believe that he had never been outside England.  From a casual remark
+somebody dropped I gathered that in his early days he must have been
+somehow connected with shipping--with ships in docks.  Of individuality
+he had plenty.  And it was this which attracted my attention at first.
+But he was not easy to classify, and before the end of the week I gave
+him up with the vague definition, "an imposing old ruffian."
+
+One rainy afternoon, oppressed by infinite boredom, I went into the
+smoking-room.  He was sitting there in absolute immobility, which was
+really fakir-like and impressive.  I began to wonder what could be the
+associations of that sort of man, his "milieu," his private connections,
+his views, his morality, his friends, and even his wife--when to my
+surprise he opened a conversation in a deep, muttering voice.
+
+I must say that since he had learned from somebody that I was a writer of
+stories he had been acknowledging my existence by means of some vague
+growls in the morning.
+
+He was essentially a taciturn man.  There was an effect of rudeness in
+his fragmentary sentences.  It was some time before I discovered that
+what he would be at was the process by which stories--stories for
+periodicals--were produced.
+
+What could one say to a fellow like that?  But I was bored to death; the
+weather continued impossible; and I resolved to be amiable.
+
+"And so you make these tales up on your own.  How do they ever come into
+your head?" he rumbled.
+
+I explained that one generally got a hint for a tale.
+
+"What sort of hint?"
+
+"Well, for instance," I said, "I got myself rowed out to the rocks the
+other day.  My boatman told me of the wreck on these rocks nearly twenty
+years ago.  That could be used as a hint for a mainly descriptive bit of
+story with some such title as 'In the Channel,' for instance."
+
+It was then that he flew out at the boatmen and the summer visitors who
+listen to their tales.  Without moving a muscle of his face he emitted a
+powerful "Rot," from somewhere out of the depths of his chest, and went
+on in his hoarse, fragmentary mumble.  "Stare at the silly rocks--nod
+their silly heads [the visitors, I presume].  What do they think a man
+is--blown-out paper bag or what?--go off pop like that when he's
+hit--Damn silly yarn--Hint indeed! . . . A lie?"
+
+You must imagine this statuesque ruffian enhaloed in the black rim of his
+hat, letting all this out as an old dog growls sometimes, with his head
+up and staring-away eyes.
+
+"Indeed!" I exclaimed.  "Well, but even if untrue it _is_ a hint,
+enabling me to see these rocks, this gale they speak of, the heavy seas,
+etc., etc., in relation to mankind.  The struggle against natural forces
+and the effect of the issue on at least one, say, exalted--"
+
+He interrupted me by an aggressive--
+
+"Would truth be any good to you?"
+
+"I shouldn't like to say," I answered, cautiously.  "It's said that truth
+is stranger than fiction."
+
+"Who says that?" he mouthed.
+
+"Oh!  Nobody in particular."
+
+I turned to the window; for the contemptuous beggar was oppressive to
+look at, with his immovable arm on the table.  I suppose my unceremonious
+manner provoked him to a comparatively long speech.
+
+"Did you ever see such a silly lot of rocks?  Like plums in a slice of
+cold pudding."
+
+I was looking at them--an acre or more of black dots scattered on the
+steel-grey shades of the level sea, under the uniform gossamer grey mist
+with a formless brighter patch in one place--the veiled whiteness of the
+cliff coming through, like a diffused, mysterious radiance.  It was a
+delicate and wonderful picture, something expressive, suggestive, and
+desolate, a symphony in grey and black--a Whistler.  But the next thing
+said by the voice behind me made me turn round.  It growled out contempt
+for all associated notions of roaring seas with concise energy, then went
+on--
+
+"I--no such foolishness--looking at the rocks out there--more likely call
+to mind an office--I used to look in sometimes at one time--office in
+London--one of them small streets behind Cannon Street Station. . . "
+
+He was very deliberate; not jerky, only fragmentary; at times profane.
+
+"That's a rather remote connection," I observed, approaching him.
+
+"Connection?  To Hades with your connections.  It was an accident."
+
+"Still," I said, "an accident has its backward and forward connections,
+which, if they could be set forth--"
+
+Without moving he seemed to lend an attentive ear.
+
+"Aye!  Set forth.  That's perhaps what you could do.  Couldn't you now?
+There's no sea life in this connection.  But you can put it in out of
+your head--if you like."
+
+"Yes.  I could, if necessary," I said.  "Sometimes it pays to put in a
+lot out of one's head, and sometimes it doesn't.  I mean that the story
+isn't worth it.  Everything's in that."
+
+It amused me to talk to him like this.  He reflected audibly that he
+guessed story-writers were out after money like the rest of the world
+which had to live by its wits: and that it was extraordinary how far
+people who were out after money would go. . . Some of them.
+
+Then he made a sally against sea life.  Silly sort of life, he called it.
+No opportunities, no experience, no variety, nothing.  Some fine men came
+out of it--he admitted--but no more chance in the world if put to it than
+fly.  Kids.  So Captain Harry Dunbar.  Good sailor.  Great name as a
+skipper.  Big man; short side-whiskers going grey, fine face, loud voice.
+A good fellow, but no more up to people's tricks than a baby.
+
+"That's the captain of the _Sagamore_ you're talking about," I said,
+confidently.
+
+After a low, scornful "Of course" he seemed now to hold on the wall with
+his fixed stare the vision of that city office, "at the back of Cannon
+Street Station," while he growled and mouthed a fragmentary description,
+jerking his chin up now and then, as if angry.
+
+It was, according to his account, a modest place of business, not shady
+in any sense, but out of the way, in a small street now rebuilt from end
+to end.  "Seven doors from the Cheshire Cat public house under the
+railway bridge.  I used to take my lunch there when my business called me
+to the city.  Cloete would come in to have his chop and make the girl
+laugh.  No need to talk much, either, for that.  Nothing but the way he
+would twinkle his spectacles on you and give a twitch of his thick mouth
+was enough to start you off before he began one of his little tales.
+Funny fellow, Cloete.  C-l-o-e-t-e--Cloete."
+
+"What was he--a Dutchman?" I asked, not seeing in the least what all this
+had to do with the Westport boatmen and the Westport summer visitors and
+this extraordinary old fellow's irritable view of them as liars and
+fools.  "Devil knows," he grunted, his eyes on the wall as if not to miss
+a single movement of a cinematograph picture.  "Spoke nothing but
+English, anyway.  First I saw him--comes off a ship in dock from the
+States--passenger.  Asks me for a small hotel near by.  Wanted to be
+quiet and have a look round for a few days.  I took him to a
+place--friend of mine. . . Next time--in the City--Hallo!  You're very
+obliging--have a drink.  Talks plenty about himself.  Been years in the
+States.  All sorts of business all over the place.  With some patent
+medicine people, too.  Travels.  Writes advertisements and all that.
+Tells me funny stories.  Tall, loose-limbed fellow.  Black hair up on
+end, like a brush; long face, long legs, long arms, twinkle in his specs,
+jocular way of speaking--in a low voice. . . See that?"
+
+I nodded, but he was not looking at me.
+
+"Never laughed so much in my life.  The beggar--would make you laugh
+telling you how he skinned his own father.  He was up to that, too.  A
+man who's been in the patent-medicine trade will be up to anything from
+pitch-and-toss to wilful murder.  And that's a bit of hard truth for you.
+Don't mind what they do--think they can carry off anything and talk
+themselves out of anything--all the world's a fool to them.  Business
+man, too, Cloete.  Came over with a few hundred pounds.  Looking for
+something to do--in a quiet way.  Nothing like the old country, after
+all, says he. . . And so we part--I with more drinks in me than I was
+used to.  After a time, perhaps six months or so, I run up against him
+again in Mr. George Dunbar's office.  Yes, _that_ office.  It wasn't
+often that I . . . However, there was a bit of his cargo in a ship in
+dock that I wanted to ask Mr. George about.  In comes Cloete out of the
+room at the back with some papers in his hand.  Partner.  You
+understand?"
+
+"Aha!" I said.  "The few hundred pounds."
+
+"And that tongue of his," he growled.  "Don't forget that tongue.  Some
+of his tales must have opened George Dunbar's eyes a bit as to what
+business means."
+
+"A plausible fellow," I suggested.
+
+"H'm!  You must have it in your own way--of course.  Well.  Partner.
+George Dunbar puts his top-hat on and tells me to wait a moment. . .
+George always looked as though he were making a few thousands a year--a
+city swell. . . Come along, old man!  And he and Captain Harry go out
+together--some business with a solicitor round the corner.  Captain
+Harry, when he was in England, used to turn up in his brother's office
+regularly about twelve.  Sat in a corner like a good boy, reading the
+paper and smoking his pipe.  So they go out. . . Model brothers, says
+Cloete--two love-birds--I am looking after the tinned-fruit side of this
+cozy little show. . . Gives me that sort of talk.  Then by-and-by: What
+sort of old thing is that _Sagamore_? Finest ship out--eh?  I dare say
+all ships are fine to you.  You live by them.  I tell you what; I would
+just as soon put my money into an old stocking.  Sooner!"
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+He drew a breath, and I noticed his hand, lying loosely on the table,
+close slowly into a fist.  In that immovable man it was startling,
+ominous, like the famed nod of the Commander.
+
+"So, already at that time--note--already," he growled.
+
+"But hold on," I interrupted.  "The _Sagamore_ belonged to Mundy and
+Rogers, I've been told."
+
+He snorted contemptuously.  "Damn boatmen--know no better.  Flew the
+firm's _house-flag_.  That's another thing.  Favour.  It was like this:
+When old man Dunbar died, Captain Harry was already in command with the
+firm.  George chucked the bank he was clerking in--to go on his own with
+what there was to share after the old chap.  George was a smart man.
+Started warehousing; then two or three things at a time: wood-pulp,
+preserved-fruit trade, and so on.  And Captain Harry let him have his
+share to work with. . . I am provided for in my ship, he says. . . But
+by-and-by Mundy and Rogers begin to sell out to foreigners all their
+ships--go into steam right away.  Captain Harry gets very upset--lose
+command, part with the ship he was fond of--very wretched.  Just then, so
+it happened, the brothers came in for some money--an old woman died or
+something.  Quite a tidy bit.  Then young George says: There's enough
+between us two to buy the _Sagamore_ with. . . But you'll need more money
+for your business, cries Captain Harry--and the other laughs at him: My
+business is going on all right.  Why, I can go out and make a handful of
+sovereigns while you are trying to get your pipe to draw, old man. . .
+Mundy and Rogers very friendly about it: Certainly, Captain.  And we will
+manage her for you, if you like, as if she were still our own. . . Why,
+with a connection like that it was good investment to buy that ship.
+Good!  Aye, at the time."
+
+The turning of his head slightly toward me at this point was like a sign
+of strong feeling in any other man.
+
+"You'll mind that this was long before Cloete came into it at all," he
+muttered, warningly.
+
+"Yes.  I will mind," I said.  "We generally say: some years passed.
+That's soon done."
+
+He eyed me for a while silently in an unseeing way, as if engrossed in
+the thought of the years so easily dealt with; his own years, too, they
+were, the years before and the years (not so many) after Cloete came upon
+the scene.  When he began to speak again, I discerned his intention to
+point out to me, in his obscure and graphic manner, the influence on
+George Dunbar of long association with Cloete's easy moral standards,
+unscrupulously persuasive gift of humour (funny fellow), and
+adventurously reckless disposition.  He desired me anxiously to elaborate
+this view, and I assured him it was quite within my powers.  He wished me
+also to understand that George's business had its ups and downs (the
+other brother was meantime sailing to and fro serenely); that he got into
+low water at times, which worried him rather, because he had married a
+young wife with expensive tastes.  He was having a pretty anxious time of
+it generally; and just then Cloete ran up in the city somewhere against a
+man working a patent medicine (the fellow's old trade) with some success,
+but which, with capital, capital to the tune of thousands to be spent
+with both hands on advertising, could be turned into a great
+thing--infinitely better-paying than a gold-mine.  Cloete became excited
+at the possibilities of that sort of business, in which he was an expert.
+I understood that George's partner was all on fire from the contact with
+this unique opportunity.
+
+"So he goes in every day into George's room about eleven, and sings that
+tune till George gnashes his teeth with rage.  Do shut up.  What's the
+good?  No money.  Hardly any to go on with, let alone pouring thousands
+into advertising.  Never dare propose to his brother Harry to sell the
+ship.  Couldn't think of it.  Worry him to death.  It would be like the
+end of the world coming.  And certainly not for a business of that kind!
+. . . Do you think it would be a swindle? asks Cloete, twitching his
+mouth. . . George owns up: No--would be no better than a squeamish ass if
+he thought that, after all these years in business.
+
+"Cloete looks at him hard--Never thought of _selling_ the ship.  Expected
+the blamed old thing wouldn't fetch half her insured value by this time.
+Then George flies out at him.  What's the meaning, then, of these silly
+jeers at ship-owning for the last three weeks?  Had enough of them,
+anyhow.
+
+"Angry at having his mouth made to water, see.  Cloete don't get excited. . .
+I am no squeamish ass, either, says he, very slowly.  'Tisn't selling
+your old _Sagamore_ wants.  The blamed thing wants tomahawking (seems the
+name _Sagamore_ means an Indian chief or something.  The figure-head was
+a half-naked savage with a feather over one ear and a hatchet in his
+belt).  Tomahawking, says he.
+
+"What do you mean? asks George. . . Wrecking--it could be managed with
+perfect safety, goes on Cloete--your brother would then put in his share
+of insurance money.  Needn't tell him exactly what for.  He thinks you're
+the smartest business man that ever lived.  Make his fortune, too. . .
+George grips the desk with both hands in his rage. . . You think my
+brother's a man to cast away his ship on purpose.  I wouldn't even dare
+think of such a thing in the same room with him--the finest fellow that
+ever lived. . . Don't make such noise; they'll hear you outside, says
+Cloete; and he tells him that his brother is the salted pattern of all
+virtues, but all that's necessary is to induce him to stay ashore for a
+voyage--for a holiday--take a rest--why not? . . . In fact, I have in
+view somebody up to that sort of game--Cloete whispers.
+
+"George nearly chokes. . . So you think I am of that sort--you think _me_
+capable--What do you take me for? . . . He almost loses his head, while
+Cloete keeps cool, only gets white about the gills. . . I take you for a
+man who will be most cursedly hard up before long. . . He goes to the
+door and sends away the clerks--there were only two--to take their lunch
+hour.  Comes back . . . What are you indignant about?  Do I want you to
+rob the widow and orphan?  Why, man!  Lloyd's a corporation, it hasn't
+got a body to starve.  There's forty or more of them perhaps who
+underwrote the lines on that silly ship of yours.  Not one human being
+would go hungry or cold for it.  They take every risk into consideration.
+Everything I tell you. . . That sort of talk.  H'm!  George too upset to
+speak--only gurgles and waves his arms; so sudden, you see.  The other,
+warming his back at the fire, goes on.  Wood-pulp business next door to a
+failure.  Tinned-fruit trade nearly played out. . . You're frightened, he
+says; but the law is only meant to frighten fools away. . . And he shows
+how safe casting away that ship would be.  Premiums paid for so many,
+many years.  No shadow of suspicion could arise.  And, dash it all! a
+ship must meet her end some day. . .
+
+"I am not frightened.  I am indignant," says George Dunbar.
+
+"Cloete boiling with rage inside.  Chance of a lifetime--his chance!  And
+he says kindly: Your wife'll be much more indignant when you ask her to
+get out of that pretty house of yours and pile in into a two-pair
+back--with kids perhaps, too. . .
+
+"George had no children.  Married a couple of years; looked forward to a
+kid or two very much.  Feels more upset than ever.  Talks about an honest
+man for father, and so on.  Cloete grins: You be quick before they come,
+and they'll have a rich man for father, and no one the worse for it.
+That's the beauty of the thing.
+
+"George nearly cries.  I believe he did cry at odd times.  This went on
+for weeks.  He couldn't quarrel with Cloete.  Couldn't pay off his few
+hundreds; and besides, he was used to have him about.  Weak fellow,
+George.  Cloete generous, too. . . Don't think of my little pile, says
+he.  Of course it's gone when we have to shut up.  But I don't care, he
+says. . . And then there was George's new wife.  When Cloete dines there,
+the beggar puts on a dress suit; little woman liked it; . . . Mr. Cloete,
+my husband's partner; such a clever man, man of the world, so amusing! . . .
+When he dines there and they are alone: Oh, Mr. Cloete, I wish George
+would do something to improve our prospects.  Our position is really so
+mediocre. . . And Cloete smiles, but isn't surprised, because he had put
+all these notions himself into her empty head. . . What your husband
+wants is enterprise, a little audacity.  You can encourage him best, Mrs.
+Dunbar. . . She was a silly, extravagant little fool.  Had made George
+take a house in Norwood.  Live up to a lot of people better off than
+themselves.  I saw her once; silk dress, pretty boots, all feathers and
+scent, pink face.  More like the Promenade at the Alhambra than a decent
+home, it looked to me.  But some women do get a devil of a hold on a
+man."
+
+"Yes, some do," I assented.  "Even when the man is the husband."
+
+"My missis," he addressed me unexpectedly, in a solemn, surprisingly
+hollow tone, "could wind me round her little finger.  I didn't find it
+out till she was gone.  Aye.  But she was a woman of sense, while that
+piece of goods ought to have been walking the streets, and that's all I
+can say. . . You must make her up out of your head.  You will know the
+sort."
+
+"Leave all that to me," I said.
+
+"H'm!" he grunted, doubtfully, then going back to his scornful tone: "A
+month or so afterwards the _Sagamore_ arrives home.  All very jolly at
+first. . . Hallo, George boy!  Hallo, Harry, old man! . . . But by and by
+Captain Harry thinks his clever brother is not looking very well.  And
+George begins to look worse.  He can't get rid of Cloete's notion.  It
+has stuck in his head. . . There's nothing wrong--quite well. . . Captain
+Harry still anxious.  Business going all right, eh?  Quite right.  Lots
+of business.  Good business. . . Of course Captain Harry believes that
+easily.  Starts chaffing his brother in his jolly way about rolling in
+money.  George's shirt sticks to his back with perspiration, and he feels
+quite angry with the captain. . . The fool, he says to himself.  Rolling
+in money, indeed!  And then he thinks suddenly: Why not? . . . Because
+Cloete's notion has got hold of his mind.
+
+"But next day he weakens and says to Cloete . . . Perhaps it would be
+best to sell.  Couldn't you talk to my brother? and Cloete explains to
+him over again for the twentieth time why selling wouldn't do, anyhow.
+No!  The _Sagamore_ must be tomahawked--as he would call it; to spare
+George's feelings, maybe.  But every time he says the word, George
+shudders. . . I've got a man at hand competent for the job who will do
+the trick for five hundred, and only too pleased at the chance, says
+Cloete. . . George shuts his eyes tight at that sort of talk--but at the
+same time he thinks: Humbug!  There can be no such man.  And yet if there
+was such a man it would be safe enough--perhaps.
+
+"And Cloete always funny about it.  He couldn't talk about anything
+without it seeming there was a great joke in it somewhere. . . Now, says
+he, I know you are a moral citizen, George.  Morality is mostly funk, and
+I think you're the funkiest man I ever came across in my travels.  Why,
+you are afraid to speak to your brother.  Afraid to open your mouth to
+him with a fortune for us all in sight. . . George flares up at this: no,
+he ain't afraid; he will speak; bangs fist on the desk.  And Cloete pats
+him on the back. . . We'll be made men presently, he says.
+
+"But the first time George attempts to speak to Captain Harry his heart
+slides down into his boots.  Captain Harry only laughs at the notion of
+staying ashore.  He wants no holiday, not he.  But Jane thinks of
+remaining in England this trip.  Go about a bit and see some of her
+people.  Jane was the Captain's wife; round-faced, pleasant lady.  George
+gives up that time; but Cloete won't let him rest.  So he tries again;
+and the Captain frowns.  He frowns because he's puzzled.  He can't make
+it out.  He has no notion of living away from his _Sagamore_. . .
+
+"Ah!" I cried.  "Now I understand."
+
+"No, you don't," he growled, his black, contemptuous stare turning on me
+crushingly.
+
+"I beg your pardon," I murmured.
+
+"H'm!  Very well, then.  Captain Harry looks very stern, and George
+crumples all up inside. . . He sees through me, he thinks. . . Of course
+it could not be; but George, by that time, was scared at his own shadow.
+He is shirking it with Cloete, too.  Gives his partner to understand that
+his brother has half a mind to try a spell on shore, and so on.  Cloete
+waits, gnawing his fingers; so anxious.  Cloete really had found a man
+for the job.  Believe it or not, he had found him inside the very
+boarding-house he lodged in--somewhere about Tottenham Court Road.  He
+had noticed down-stairs a fellow--a boarder and not a boarder--hanging
+about the dark--part of the passage mostly; sort of 'man of the house,' a
+slinking chap.  Black eyes.  White face.  The woman of the house--a widow
+lady, she called herself--very full of Mr. Stafford; Mr. Stafford this
+and Mr. Stafford that. . . Anyhow, Cloete one evening takes him out to
+have a drink.  Cloete mostly passed away his evenings in saloon bars.  No
+drunkard, though, Cloete; for company; liked to talk to all sorts there;
+just habit; American fashion.
+
+"So Cloete takes that chap out more than once.  Not very good company,
+though.  Little to say for himself.  Sits quiet and drinks what's given
+to him, eyes always half closed, speaks sort of demure. . . I've had
+misfortunes, he says.  The truth was they had kicked him out of a big
+steam-ship company for disgraceful conduct; nothing to affect his
+certificate, you understand; and he had gone down quite easily.  Liked
+it, I expect.  Anything's better than work.  Lived on the widow lady who
+kept that boarding-house."
+
+"That's almost incredible," I ventured to interrupt.  "A man with a
+master's certificate, do you mean?"
+
+"I do; I've known them 'bus cads," he growled, contemptuously.  "Yes.
+Swing on the tail-board by the strap and yell, 'tuppence all the way.'
+Through drink.  But this Stafford was of another kind.  Hell's full of
+such Staffords; Cloete would make fun of him, and then there would be a
+nasty gleam in the fellow's half-shut eye.  But Cloete was generally kind
+to him.  Cloete was a fellow that would be kind to a mangy dog.  Anyhow,
+he used to stand drinks to that object, and now and then gave him half a
+crown--because the widow lady kept Mr. Stafford short of pocket-money.
+They had rows almost every day down in the basement. . .
+
+"It was the fellow being a sailor that put into Cloete's mind the first
+notion of doing away with the _Sagamore_.  He studies him a bit, thinks
+there's enough devil in him yet to be tempted, and one evening he says to
+him . . . I suppose you wouldn't mind going to sea again, for a spell? . . .
+The other never raises his eyes; says it's scarcely worth one's while
+for the miserable salary one gets. . . Well, but what do you say to
+captain's wages for a time, and a couple of hundred extra if you are
+compelled to come home without the ship.  Accidents will happen, says
+Cloete. . . Oh! sure to, says that Stafford; and goes on taking sips of
+his drink as if he had no interest in the matter.
+
+"Cloete presses him a bit; but the other observes, impudent and languid
+like: You see, there's no future in a thing like that--is there? . . Oh!
+no, says Cloete.  Certainly not.  I don't mean this to have any
+future--as far as you are concerned.  It's a 'once for all' transaction.
+Well, what do you estimate your future at? he asks. . . The fellow more
+listless than ever--nearly asleep.--I believe the skunk was really too
+lazy to care.  Small cheating at cards, wheedling or bullying his living
+out of some woman or other, was more his style.  Cloete swears at him in
+whispers something awful.  All this in the saloon bar of the Horse Shoe,
+Tottenham Court Road.  Finally they agree, over the second sixpennyworth
+of Scotch hot, on five hundred pounds as the price of tomahawking the
+_Sagamore_.  And Cloete waits to see what George can do.
+
+"A week or two goes by.  The other fellow loafs about the house as if
+there had been nothing, and Cloete begins to doubt whether he really
+means ever to tackle that job.  But one day he stops Cloete at the door,
+with his downcast eyes: What about that employment you wished to give me?
+he asks. . . You see, he had played some more than usual dirty trick on
+the woman and expected awful ructions presently; and to be fired out for
+sure.  Cloete very pleased.  George had been prevaricating to him such a
+lot that he really thought the thing was as well as settled.  And he
+says: Yes.  It's time I introduced you to my friend.  Just get your hat
+and we will go now. . .
+
+"The two come into the office, and George at his desk sits up in a sudden
+panic--staring.  Sees a tallish fellow, sort of nasty-handsome face,
+heavy eyes, half shut; short drab overcoat, shabby bowler hat, very
+careful--like in his movements.  And he thinks to himself, Is that how
+such a man looks!  No, the thing's impossible. . . Cloete does the
+introduction, and the fellow turns round to look behind him at the chair
+before he sits down. . . A thoroughly competent man, Cloete goes on . . .
+The man says nothing, sits perfectly quiet.  And George can't speak,
+throat too dry.  Then he makes an effort: H'm!  H'm!  Oh
+yes--unfortunately--sorry to disappoint--my brother--made other
+arrangements--going himself.
+
+"The fellow gets up, never raising his eyes off the ground, like a modest
+girl, and goes out softly, right out of the office without a sound.
+Cloete sticks his chin in his hand and bites all his fingers at once.
+George's heart slows down and he speaks to Cloete. . . This can't be
+done.  How can it be?  Directly the ship is lost Harry would see through
+it.  You know he is a man to go to the underwriters himself with his
+suspicions.  And he would break his heart over me.  How can I play that
+on him?  There's only two of us in the world belonging to each other. . .
+
+"Cloete lets out a horrid cuss-word, jumps up, bolts away into his room,
+and George hears him there banging things around.  After a while he goes
+to the door and says in a trembling voice: You ask me for an
+impossibility. . . Cloete inside ready to fly out like a tiger and rend
+him; but he opens the door a little way and says softly: Talking of
+hearts, yours is no bigger than a mouse's, let me tell you. . . But
+George doesn't care--load off the heart, anyhow.  And just then Captain
+Harry comes in. . . Hallo, George boy.  I am little late.  What about a
+chop at the Cheshire, now? . . . Right you are, old man. . . And off they
+go to lunch together.  Cloete has nothing to eat that day.
+
+"George feels a new man for a time; but all of a sudden that fellow
+Stafford begins to hang about the street, in sight of the house door.
+The first time George sees him he thinks he made a mistake.  But no; next
+time he has to go out, there is the very fellow skulking on the other
+side of the road.  It makes George nervous; but he must go out on
+business, and when the fellow cuts across the road-way he dodges him.  He
+dodges him once, twice, three times; but at last he gets nabbed in his
+very doorway. . . What do you want? he says, trying to look fierce.
+
+"It seems that ructions had come in the basement of that boarding-house,
+and the widow lady had turned on him (being jealous mad), to the extent
+of talking of the police.  _That_ Mr. Stafford couldn't stand; so he
+cleared out like a scared stag, and there he was, chucked into the
+streets, so to speak.  Cloete looked so savage as he went to and fro that
+he hadn't the spunk to tackle him; but George seemed a softer kind to his
+eye.  He would have been glad of half a quid, anything. . . I've had
+misfortunes, he says softly, in his demure way, which frightens George
+more than a row would have done. . . Consider the severity of my
+disappointment, he says. . .
+
+"George, instead of telling him to go to the devil, loses his head. . . I
+don't know you.  What do you want? he cries, and bolts up-stairs to
+Cloete. . . . Look what's come of it, he gasps; now we are at the mercy
+of that horrid fellow. . . Cloete tries to show him that the fellow can
+do nothing; but George thinks that some sort of scandal may be forced on,
+anyhow.  Says that he can't live with that horror haunting him.  Cloete
+would laugh if he weren't too weary of it all.  Then a thought strikes
+him and he changes his tune. . . Well, perhaps!  I will go down-stairs
+and send him away to begin with. . . He comes back. . . He's gone.  But
+perhaps you are right.  The fellow's hard up, and that's what makes
+people desperate.  The best thing would be to get him out of the country
+for a time.  Look here, the poor devil is really in want of employment.
+I won't ask you much this time: only to hold your tongue; and I shall try
+to get your brother to take him as chief officer.  At this George lays
+his arms and his head on his desk, so that Cloete feels sorry for him.
+But altogether Cloete feels more cheerful because he has shaken the ghost
+a bit into that Stafford.  That very afternoon he buys him a suit of blue
+clothes, and tells him that he will have to turn to and work for his
+living now.  Go to sea as mate of the _Sagamore_.  The skunk wasn't very
+willing, but what with having nothing to eat and no place to sleep in,
+and the woman having frightened him with the talk of some prosecution or
+other, he had no choice, properly speaking.  Cloete takes care of him for
+a couple of days. . . Our arrangement still stands, says he.  Here's the
+ship bound for Port Elizabeth; not a safe anchorage at all.  Should she
+by chance part from her anchors in a north-east gale and get lost on the
+beach, as many of them do, why, it's five hundred in your pocket--and a
+quick return home.  You are up to the job, ain't you?
+
+"Our Mr. Stafford takes it all in with downcast eyes. . . I am a
+competent seaman, he says, with his sly, modest air.  A ship's chief mate
+has no doubt many opportunities to manipulate the chains and anchors to
+some purpose. . . At this Cloete thumps him on the back: You'll do, my
+noble sailor.  Go in and win. . .
+
+"Next thing George knows, his brother tells him that he had occasion to
+oblige his partner.  And glad of it, too.  Likes the partner no end.
+Took a friend of his as mate.  Man had his troubles, been ashore a year
+nursing a dying wife, it seems.  Down on his luck. . . George protests
+earnestly that he knows nothing of the person.  Saw him once.  Not very
+attractive to look at. . . And Captain Harry says in his hearty way,
+That's so, but must give the poor devil a chance. . .
+
+"So Mr. Stafford joins in dock.  And it seems that he did manage to
+monkey with one of the cables--keeping his mind on Port Elizabeth.  The
+riggers had all the cable ranged on deck to clean lockers.  The new mate
+watches them go ashore--dinner hour--and sends the ship-keeper out of the
+ship to fetch him a bottle of beer.  Then he goes to work whittling away
+the forelock of the forty-five-fathom shackle-pin, gives it a tap or two
+with a hammer just to make it loose, and of course that cable wasn't safe
+any more.  Riggers come back--you know what riggers are: come day, go
+day, and God send Sunday.  Down goes the chain into the locker without
+their foreman looking at the shackles at all.  What does he care?  He
+ain't going in the ship.  And two days later the ship goes to sea. . . "
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+At this point I was incautious enough to breathe out another "I see,"
+which gave offence again, and brought on me a rude "No, you don't"--as
+before.  But in the pause he remembered the glass of beer at his elbow.
+He drank half of it, wiped his mustaches, and remarked grimly--
+
+"Don't you think that there will be any sea life in this, because there
+ain't.  If you're going to put in any out of your own head, now's your
+chance.  I suppose you know what ten days of bad weather in the Channel
+are like?  I don't.  Anyway, ten whole days go by.  One Monday Cloete
+comes to the office a little late--hears a woman's voice in George's room
+and looks in.  Newspapers on the desk, on the floor; Captain Harry's wife
+sitting with red eyes and a bag on the chair near her. . . Look at this,
+says George, in great excitement, showing him a paper.  Cloete's heart
+gives a jump.  Ha!  Wreck in Westport Bay.  The _Sagamore_ gone ashore
+early hours of Sunday, and so the newspaper men had time to put in some
+of their work.  Columns of it.  Lifeboat out twice.  Captain and crew
+remain by the ship.  Tugs summoned to assist.  If the weather improves,
+this well-known fine ship may yet be saved. . . You know the way these
+chaps put it. . . Mrs. Harry there on her way to catch a train from
+Cannon Street.  Got an hour to wait.
+
+"Cloete takes George aside and whispers: Ship saved yet!  Oh, damn!  That
+must never be; you hear?  But George looks at him dazed, and Mrs. Harry
+keeps on sobbing quietly: . . . I ought to have been with him.  But I am
+going to him. . . We are all going together, cries Cloete, all of a
+sudden.  He rushes out, sends the woman a cup of hot bovril from the shop
+across the road, buys a rug for her, thinks of everything; and in the
+train tucks her in and keeps on talking, thirteen to the dozen, all the
+way, to keep her spirits up, as it were; but really because he can't hold
+his peace for very joy.  Here's the thing done all at once, and nothing
+to pay.  Done.  Actually done.  His head swims now and again when he
+thinks of it.  What enormous luck!  It almost frightens him.  He would
+like to yell and sing.  Meantime George Dunbar sits in his corner,
+looking so deadly miserable that at last poor Mrs. Harry tries to comfort
+him, and so cheers herself up at the same time by talking about how her
+Harry is a prudent man; not likely to risk his crew's life or his own
+unnecessarily--and so on.
+
+"First thing they hear at Westport station is that the life-boat has been
+out to the ship again, and has brought off the second officer, who had
+hurt himself, and a few sailors.  Captain and the rest of the crew, about
+fifteen in all, are still on board.  Tugs expected to arrive every
+moment.
+
+"They take Mrs. Harry to the inn, nearly opposite the rocks; she bolts
+straight up-stairs to look out of the window, and she lets out a great
+cry when she sees the wreck.  She won't rest till she gets on board to
+her Harry.  Cloete soothes her all he can. . . All right; you try to eat
+a mouthful, and we will go to make inquiries.
+
+"He draws George out of the room: Look here, she can't go on board, but I
+shall.  I'll see to it that he doesn't stop in the ship too long.  Let's
+go and find the coxswain of the life-boat. . . George follows him,
+shivering from time to time.  The waves are washing over the old pier;
+not much wind, a wild, gloomy sky over the bay.  In the whole world only
+one tug away off, heading to the seas, tossed in and out of sight every
+minute as regular as clockwork.
+
+"They meet the coxswain and he tells them: Yes!  He's going out again.
+No, they ain't in danger on board--not yet.  But the ship's chance is
+very poor.  Still, if the wind doesn't pipe up again and the sea goes
+down something might be tried.  After some talk he agrees to take Cloete
+on board; supposed to be with an urgent message from the owners to the
+captain.
+
+"Whenever Cloete looks at the sky he feels comforted; it looks so
+threatening.  George Dunbar follows him about with a white face and
+saying nothing.  Cloete takes him to have a drink or two, and by and by
+he begins to pick up. . . That's better, says Cloete; dash me if it
+wasn't like walking about with a dead man before.  You ought to be
+throwing up your cap, man.  I feel as if I wanted to stand in the street
+and cheer.  Your brother is safe, the ship is lost, and we are made men.
+
+"Are you certain she's lost? asks George.  It would be an awful blow
+after all the agonies I have gone through in my mind, since you first
+spoke to me, if she were to be got off--and--and--all this temptation to
+begin over again. . . For we had nothing to do with this; had we?
+
+"Of course not, says Cloete.  Wasn't your brother himself in charge?
+It's providential. . . Oh! cries George, shocked. . . Well, say it's the
+devil, says Cloete, cheerfully.  I don't mind!  You had nothing to do
+with it any more than a baby unborn, you great softy, you. . . Cloete has
+got so that he almost loved George Dunbar.  Well.  Yes.  That was so.  I
+don't mean he respected him.  He was just fond of his partner.
+
+"They go back, you may say fairly skipping, to the hotel, and find the
+wife of the captain at the open window, with her eyes on the ship as if
+she wanted to fly across the bay over there. . . Now then, Mrs. Dunbar,
+cries Cloete, you can't go, but I am going.  Any messages?  Don't be shy.
+I'll deliver every word faithfully.  And if you would like to give me a
+kiss for him, I'll deliver that too, dash me if I don't.
+
+"He makes Mrs. Harry laugh with his patter. . . Oh, dear Mr. Cloete, you
+are a calm, reasonable man.  Make him behave sensibly.  He's a bit
+obstinate, you know, and he's so fond of the ship, too.  Tell him I am
+here--looking on. . . Trust me, Mrs. Dunbar.  Only shut that window,
+that's a good girl.  You will be sure to catch cold if you don't, and the
+Captain won't be pleased coming off the wreck to find you coughing and
+sneezing so that you can't tell him how happy you are.  And now if you
+can get me a bit of tape to fasten my glasses on good to my ears, I will
+be going. . .
+
+"How he gets on board I don't know.  All wet and shaken and excited and
+out of breath, he does get on board.  Ship lying over, smothered in
+sprays, but not moving very much; just enough to jag one's nerve a bit.
+He finds them all crowded on the deck-house forward, in their shiny
+oilskins, with faces like sick men.  Captain Harry can't believe his
+eyes.  What!  Mr. Cloete!  What are you doing here, in God's name? . . .
+Your wife's ashore there, looking on, gasps out Cloete; and after they
+had talked a bit, Captain Harry thinks it's uncommonly plucky and kind of
+his brother's partner to come off to him like this.  Man glad to have
+somebody to talk to. . . It's a bad business, Mr. Cloete, he says.  And
+Cloete rejoices to hear that.  Captain Harry thinks he had done his best,
+but the cable had parted when he tried to anchor her.  It was a great
+trial to lose the ship.  Well, he would have to face it.  He fetches a
+deep sigh now and then.  Cloete almost sorry he had come on board,
+because to be on that wreck keeps his chest in a tight band all the time.
+They crouch out of the wind under the port boat, a little apart from the
+men.  The life-boat had gone away after putting Cloete on board, but was
+coming back next high water to take off the crew if no attempt at getting
+the ship afloat could be made.  Dusk was falling; winter's day; black
+sky; wind rising.  Captain Harry felt melancholy.  God's will be done.
+If she must be left on the rocks--why, she must.  A man should take what
+God sends him standing up. . . Suddenly his voice breaks, and he squeezes
+Cloete's arm: It seems as if I couldn't leave her, he whispers.  Cloete
+looks round at the men like a lot of huddled sheep and thinks to himself:
+They won't stay. . . Suddenly the ship lifts a little and sets down with
+a thump.  Tide rising.  Everybody beginning to look out for the
+life-boat.  Some of the men made her out far away and also two more tugs.
+But the gale has come on again, and everybody knows that no tug will ever
+dare come near the ship.
+
+"That's the end, Captain Harry says, very low. . . . Cloete thinks he
+never felt so cold in all his life. . . And I feel as if I didn't care to
+live on just now, mutters Captain Harry . . . Your wife's ashore, looking
+on, says Cloete . . . Yes.  Yes.  It must be awful for her to look at the
+poor old ship lying here done for.  Why, that's our home.
+
+"Cloete thinks that as long as the _Sagamore's_ done for he doesn't care,
+and only wishes himself somewhere else.  The slightest movement of the
+ship cuts his breath like a blow.  And he feels excited by the danger,
+too.  The captain takes him aside. . . The life-boat can't come near us
+for more than an hour.  Look here, Cloete, since you are here, and such a
+plucky one--do something for me. . . He tells him then that down in his
+cabin aft in a certain drawer there is a bundle of important papers and
+some sixty sovereigns in a small canvas bag.  Asks Cloete to go and get
+these things out.  He hasn't been below since the ship struck, and it
+seems to him that if he were to take his eyes off her she would fall to
+pieces.  And then the men--a scared lot by this time--if he were to leave
+them by themselves they would attempt to launch one of the ship's boats
+in a panic at some heavier thump--and then some of them bound to get
+drowned. . . There are two or three boxes of matches about my shelves in
+my cabin if you want a light, says Captain Harry.  Only wipe your wet
+hands before you begin to feel for them. . .
+
+"Cloete doesn't like the job, but doesn't like to show funk, either--and
+he goes.  Lots of water on the main-deck, and he splashes along; it was
+getting dark, too.  All at once, by the mainmast, somebody catches him by
+the arm.  Stafford.  He wasn't thinking of Stafford at all.  Captain
+Harry had said something as to the mate not being quite satisfactory, but
+it wasn't much.  Cloete doesn't recognise him in his oilskins at first.
+He sees a white face with big eyes peering at him. . . Are you pleased,
+Mr. Cloete . . . ?
+
+"Cloete is moved to laugh at the whine, and shakes him off.  But the
+fellow scrambles on after him on the poop and follows him down into the
+cabin of that wrecked ship.  And there they are, the two of them; can
+hardly see each other. . . You don't mean to make me believe you have had
+anything to do with this, says Cloete. . .
+
+"They both shiver, nearly out of their wits with the excitement of being
+on board that ship.  She thumps and lurches, and they stagger together,
+feeling sick.  Cloete again bursts out laughing at that wretched creature
+Stafford pretending to have been up to something so desperate. . . Is
+that how you think you can treat me now? yells the other man all of a
+sudden. . .
+
+"A sea strikes the stern, the ship trembles and groans all round them,
+there's the noise of the seas about and overhead, confusing Cloete, and
+he hears the other screaming as if crazy. . . Ah, you don't believe me!
+Go and look at the port chain.  Parted?  Eh?  Go and see if it's parted.
+Go and find the broken link.  You can't.  There's no broken link.  That
+means a thousand pounds for me.  No less.  A thousand the day after we
+get ashore--prompt.  I won't wait till she breaks up, Mr. Cloete.  To the
+underwriters I go if I've to walk to London on my bare feet.  Port cable!
+Look at her port cable, I will say to them.  I doctored it--for the
+owners--tempted by a low rascal called Cloete.
+
+"Cloete does not understand what it means exactly.  All he sees is that
+the fellow means to make mischief.  He sees trouble ahead. . . Do you
+think you can scare me? he asks,--you poor miserable skunk. . . And
+Stafford faces him out--both holding on to the cabin table: No, damn you,
+you are only a dirty vagabond; but I can scare the other, the chap in the
+black coat. . .
+
+"Meaning George Dunbar.  Cloete's brain reels at the thought.  He doesn't
+imagine the fellow can do any real harm, but he knows what George is;
+give the show away; upset the whole business he had set his heart on.  He
+says nothing; he hears the other, what with the funk and strain and
+excitement, panting like a dog--and then a snarl. . . A thousand down,
+twenty-four hours after we get ashore; day after to-morrow.  That's my
+last word, Mr. Cloete. . . A thousand pounds, day after to-morrow, says
+Cloete.  Oh yes.  And to-day take this, you dirty cur. . . He hits
+straight from the shoulder in sheer rage, nothing else.  Stafford goes
+away spinning along the bulk-head.  Seeing this, Cloete steps out and
+lands him another one somewhere about the jaw.  The fellow staggers
+backward right into the captain's cabin through the open door.  Cloete,
+following him up, hears him fall down heavily and roll to leeward, then
+slams the door to and turns the key. . . There! says he to himself, that
+will stop you from making trouble."
+
+"By Jove!" I murmured.
+
+The old fellow departed from his impressive immobility to turn his
+rakishly hatted head and look at me with his old, black, lack-lustre
+eyes.
+
+"He did leave him there," he uttered, weightily, returning to the
+contemplation of the wall.  "Cloete didn't mean to allow anybody, let
+alone a thing like Stafford, to stand in the way of his great notion of
+making George and himself, and Captain Harry, too, for that matter, rich
+men.  And he didn't think much of consequences.  These patent-medicine
+chaps don't care what they say or what they do.  They think the world's
+bound to swallow any story they like to tell. . . He stands listening for
+a bit.  And it gives him quite a turn to hear a thump at the door and a
+sort of muffled raving screech inside the captain's room.  He thinks he
+hears his own name, too, through the awful crash as the old _Sagamore_
+rises and falls to a sea.  That noise and that awful shock make him clear
+out of the cabin.  He collects his senses on the poop.  But his heart
+sinks a little at the black wildness of the night.  Chances that he will
+get drowned himself before long.  Puts his head down the companion.
+Through the wind and breaking seas he can hear the noise of Stafford's
+beating against the door and cursing.  He listens and says to himself:
+No.  Can't trust him now. . .
+
+"When he gets back to the top of the deck-house he says to Captain Harry,
+who asks him if he got the things, that he is very sorry.  There was
+something wrong with the door.  Couldn't open it.  And to tell you the
+truth, says he, I didn't like to stop any longer in that cabin.  There
+are noises there as if the ship were going to pieces. . . Captain Harry
+thinks: Nervous; can't be anything wrong with the door.  But he says:
+Thanks--never mind, never mind. . . All hands looking out now for the
+life-boat.  Everybody thinking of himself rather.  Cloete asks himself,
+will they miss him?  But the fact is that Mr. Stafford had made such poor
+show at sea that after the ship struck nobody ever paid any attention to
+him.  Nobody cared what he did or where he was.  Pitch dark, too--no
+counting of heads.  The light of the tug with the lifeboat in tow is seen
+making for the ship, and Captain Harry asks: Are we all there? . . .
+Somebody answers: All here, sir. . . Stand by to leave the ship, then,
+says Captain Harry; and two of you help the gentleman over first. . .
+Aye, aye, sir. . . Cloete was moved to ask Captain Harry to let him stay
+till last, but the life-boat drops on a grapnel abreast the fore-rigging,
+two chaps lay hold of him, watch their chance, and drop him into her, all
+safe.
+
+"He's nearly exhausted; not used to that sort of thing, you see.  He sits
+in the stern-sheets with his eyes shut.  Don't want to look at the white
+water boiling all around.  The men drop into the boat one after another.
+Then he hears Captain Harry's voice shouting in the wind to the coxswain,
+to hold on a moment, and some other words he can't catch, and the
+coxswain yelling back: Don't be long, sir. . . What is it?  Cloete asks
+feeling faint. . . Something about the ship's papers, says the coxswain,
+very anxious.  It's no time to be fooling about alongside, you
+understand.  They haul the boat off a little and wait.  The water flies
+over her in sheets.  Cloete's senses almost leave him.  He thinks of
+nothing.  He's numb all over, till there's a shout: Here he is! . . .
+They see a figure in the fore-rigging waiting--they slack away on the
+grapnel-line and get him in the boat quite easy.  There is a little
+shouting--it's all mixed up with the noise of the sea.  Cloete fancies
+that Stafford's voice is talking away quite close to his ear.  There's a
+lull in the wind, and Stafford's voice seems to be speaking very fast to
+the coxswain; he tells him that of course he was near his skipper, was
+all the time near him, till the old man said at the last moment that he
+must go and get the ship's papers from aft; would insist on going
+himself; told him, Stafford, to get into the life-boat. . . He had meant
+to wait for his skipper, only there came this smooth of the seas, and he
+thought he would take his chance at once.
+
+"Cloete opens his eyes.  Yes.  There's Stafford sitting close by him in
+that crowded life-boat.  The coxswain stoops over Cloete and cries: Did
+you hear what the mate said, sir? . . . Cloete's face feels as if it were
+set in plaster, lips and all.  Yes, I did, he forces himself to answer.
+The coxswain waits a moment, then says: I don't like it. . . And he turns
+to the mate, telling him it was a pity he did not try to run along the
+deck and hurry up the captain when the lull came.  Stafford answers at
+once that he did think of it, only he was afraid of missing him on the
+deck in the dark.  For, says he, the captain might have got over at once,
+thinking I was already in the life-boat, and you would have hauled off
+perhaps, leaving me behind. . . True enough, says the coxswain.  A minute
+or so passes.  This won't do, mutters the coxswain.  Suddenly Stafford
+speaks up in a sort of hollow voice: I was by when he told Mr. Cloete
+here that he didn't know how he would ever have the courage to leave the
+old ship; didn't he, now? . . . And Cloete feels his arm being gripped
+quietly in the dark. . . Didn't he now?  We were standing together just
+before you went over, Mr. Cloete? . . .
+
+"Just then the coxswain cries out: I'm going on board to see. . . Cloete
+tears his arm away: I am going with you. . .
+
+"When they get aboard, the coxswain tells Cloete to go aft along one side
+of the ship and he would go along the other so as not to miss the
+captain. . . And feel about with your hands, too, says he; he might have
+fallen and be lying insensible somewhere on the deck. . . When Cloete
+gets at last to the cabin companion on the poop the coxswain is already
+there, peering down and sniffing.  I detect a smell of smoke down there,
+says he.  And he yells: Are you there, sir? . . . This is not a case for
+shouting, says Cloete, feeling his heart go stony, as it were. . . Down
+they go.  Pitch dark; the inclination so sharp that the coxswain, groping
+his way into the captain's room, slips and goes tumbling down.  Cloete
+hears him cry out as though he had hurt himself, and asks what's the
+matter.  And the coxswain answers quietly that he had fallen on the
+captain, lying there insensible.  Cloete without a word begins to grope
+all over the shelves for a box of matches, finds one, and strikes a
+light.  He sees the coxswain in his cork jacket kneeling over Captain
+Harry. . . Blood, says the coxswain, looking up, and the match goes out. . .
+
+"Wait a bit, says Cloete; I'll make paper spills. . . He had felt the
+back of books on the shelves.  And so he stands lighting one spill from
+another while the coxswain turns poor Captain Harry over.  Dead, he says.
+Shot through the heart.  Here's the revolver. . . He hands it up to
+Cloete, who looks at it before putting it in his pocket, and sees a plate
+on the butt with _H. Dunbar_ on it. . . His own, he mutters. . . Whose
+else revolver did you expect to find? snaps the coxswain.  And look, he
+took off his long oilskin in the cabin before he went in.  But what's
+this lot of burnt paper?  What could he want to burn the ship's papers
+for? . . .
+
+Cloete sees all, the little drawers drawn out, and asks the coxswain to
+look well into them. . . There's nothing, says the man.  Cleaned out.
+Seems to have pulled out all he could lay his hands on and set fire to
+the lot.  Mad--that's what it is--went mad.  And now he's dead.  You'll
+have to break it to his wife. . .
+
+"I feel as if I were going mad myself, says Cloete, suddenly, and the
+coxswain begs him for God's sake to pull himself together, and drags him
+away from the cabin.  They had to leave the body, and as it was they were
+just in time before a furious squall came on.  Cloete is dragged into the
+life-boat and the coxswain tumbles in.  Haul away on the grapnel, he
+shouts; the captain has shot himself. . .
+
+"Cloete was like a dead man--didn't care for anything.  He let that
+Stafford pinch his arm twice without making a sign.  Most of Westport was
+on the old pier to see the men out of the life-boat, and at first there
+was a sort of confused cheery uproar when she came alongside; but after
+the coxswain has shouted something the voices die out, and everybody is
+very quiet.  As soon as Cloete has set foot on something firm he becomes
+himself again.  The coxswain shakes hands with him: Poor woman, poor
+woman, I'd rather you had the job than I. . .
+
+"Where's the mate?" asks Cloete.  He's the last man who spoke to the
+master. . . Somebody ran along--the crew were being taken to the Mission
+Hall, where there was a fire and shake-downs ready for them--somebody ran
+along the pier and caught up with Stafford. . . Here!  The owner's agent
+wants you. . . Cloete tucks the fellow's arm under his own and walks away
+with him to the left, where the fishing-harbour is. . . I suppose I
+haven't misunderstood you.  You wish me to look after you a bit, says he.
+The other hangs on him rather limp, but gives a nasty little laugh: You
+had better, he mumbles; but mind, no tricks; no tricks, Mr. Cloete; we
+are on land now.
+
+"There's a police office within fifty yards from here, says Cloete.  He
+turns into a little public house, pushes Stafford along the passage.  The
+landlord runs out of the bar. . . This is the mate of the ship on the
+rocks, Cloete explains; I wish you would take care of him a bit to-night. . .
+What's the matter with him? asks the man.  Stafford leans against the
+wall in the passage, looking ghastly.  And Cloete says it's nothing--done
+up, of course. . . I will be responsible for the expense; I am the
+owner's agent.  I'll be round in an hour or two to see him.
+
+And Cloete gets back to the hotel.  The news had travelled there already,
+and the first thing he sees is George outside the door as white as a
+sheet waiting for him.  Cloete just gives him a nod and they go in.  Mrs.
+Harry stands at the head of the stairs, and, when she sees only these two
+coming up, flings her arms above her head and runs into her room.  Nobody
+had dared tell her, but not seeing her husband was enough.  Cloete hears
+an awful shriek. . . Go to her, he says to George.
+
+"While he's alone in the private parlour Cloete drinks a glass of brandy
+and thinks it all out.  Then George comes in. . . The landlady's with
+her, he says.  And he begins to walk up and down the room, flinging his
+arms about and talking, disconnected like, his face set hard as Cloete
+has never seen it before. . . What must be, must be.  Dead--only brother.
+Well, dead--his troubles over.  But we are living, he says to Cloete; and
+I suppose, says he, glaring at him with hot, dry eyes, that you won't
+forget to wire in the morning to your friend that we are coming in for
+certain. . .
+
+"Meaning the patent-medicine fellow. . . Death is death and business is
+business, George goes on; and look--my hands are clean, he says, showing
+them to Cloete.  Cloete thinks: He's going crazy.  He catches hold of him
+by the shoulders and begins to shake him: Damn you--if you had had the
+sense to know what to say to your brother, if you had had the spunk to
+speak to him at all, you moral creature you, he would be alive now, he
+shouts.
+
+"At this George stares, then bursts out weeping with a great bellow.  He
+throws himself on the couch, buries his face in a cushion, and howls like
+a kid. . . That's better, thinks Cloete, and he leaves him, telling the
+landlord that he must go out, as he has some little business to attend to
+that night.  The landlord's wife, weeping herself, catches him on the
+stairs: Oh, sir, that poor lady will go out of her mind. . .
+
+"Cloete shakes her off, thinking to himself: Oh no!  She won't.  She will
+get over it.  Nobody will go mad about this affair unless I do.  It isn't
+sorrow that makes people go mad, but worry.
+
+"There Cloete was wrong.  What affected Mrs. Harry was that her husband
+should take his own life, with her, as it were, looking on.  She brooded
+over it so that in less than a year they had to put her into a Home.  She
+was very, very quiet; just gentle melancholy.  She lived for quite a long
+time.
+
+"Well, Cloete splashes along in the wind and rain.  Nobody in the
+streets--all the excitement over.  The publican runs out to meet him in
+the passage and says to him: Not this way.  He isn't in his room.  We
+couldn't get him to go to bed nohow.  He's in the little parlour there.
+We've lighted him a fire. . . You have been giving him drinks too, says
+Cloete; I never said I would be responsible for drinks.  How many? . . .
+Two, says the other.  It's all right.  I don't mind doing that much for a
+shipwrecked sailor. . . Cloete smiles his funny smile: Eh?  Come.  He
+paid for them. . . The publican just blinks. . . Gave you gold, didn't
+he?  Speak up! . . . What of that! cries the man.  What are you after,
+anyway?  He had the right change for his sovereign.
+
+"Just so, says Cloete.  He walks into the parlour, and there he sees our
+Stafford; hair all up on end, landlord's shirt and pants on, bare feet in
+slippers, sitting by the fire.  When he sees Cloete he casts his eyes
+down.
+
+"You didn't mean us ever to meet again, Mr. Cloete, Stafford says,
+demurely. . . That fellow, when he had the drink he wanted--he wasn't a
+drunkard--would put on this sort of sly, modest air. . . But since the
+captain committed suicide, he says, I have been sitting here thinking it
+out.  All sorts of things happen.  Conspiracy to lose the ship--attempted
+murder--and this suicide.  For if it was not suicide, Mr. Cloete, then I
+know of a victim of the most cruel, cold-blooded attempt at murder;
+somebody who has suffered a thousand deaths.  And that makes the thousand
+pounds of which we spoke once a quite insignificant sum.  Look how very
+convenient this suicide is. . .
+
+"He looks up at Cloete then, who smiles at him and comes quite close to
+the table.
+
+"You killed Harry Dunbar, he whispers. . . The fellow glares at him and
+shows his teeth: Of course I did!  I had been in that cabin for an hour
+and a half like a rat in a trap. . . Shut up and left to drown in that
+wreck.  Let flesh and blood judge.  Of course I shot him!  I thought it
+was you, you murdering scoundrel, come back to settle me.  He opens the
+door flying and tumbles right down upon me; I had a revolver in my hand,
+and I shot him.  I was crazy.  Men have gone crazy for less.
+
+"Cloete looks at him without flinching.  Aha!  That's your story, is it?
+. . . And he shakes the table a little in his passion as he speaks. . .
+Now listen to mine.  What's this conspiracy?  Who's going to prove it?
+You were there to rob.  You were rifling his cabin; he came upon you
+unawares with your hands in the drawer; and you shot him with his own
+revolver.  You killed to steal--to steal!  His brother and the clerks in
+the office know that he took sixty pounds with him to sea.  Sixty pounds
+in gold in a canvas bag.  He told me where they were.  The coxswain of
+the life-boat can swear to it that the drawers were all empty.  And you
+are such a fool that before you're half an hour ashore you change a
+sovereign to pay for a drink.  Listen to me.  If you don't turn up day
+after to-morrow at George Dunbar's solicitors, to make the proper
+deposition as to the loss of the ship, I shall set the police on your
+track.  Day after to-morrow. . .
+
+"And then what do you think?  That Stafford begins to tear his hair.
+Just so.  Tugs at it with both hands without saying anything.  Cloete
+gives a push to the table which nearly sends the fellow off his chair,
+tumbling inside the fender; so that he has got to catch hold of it to
+save himself. . .
+
+"You know the sort of man I am, Cloete says, fiercely.  I've got to a
+point that I don't care what happens to me.  I would shoot you now for
+tuppence.
+
+"At this the cur dodges under the table.  Then Cloete goes out, and as he
+turns in the street--you know, little fishermen's cottages, all dark;
+raining in torrents, too--the other opens the window of the parlour and
+speaks in a sort of crying voice--
+
+"You low Yankee fiend--I'll pay you off some day.
+
+"Cloete passes by with a damn bitter laugh, because he thinks that the
+fellow in a way has paid him off already, if he only knew it."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+My impressive ruffian drank what remained of his beer, while his black,
+sunken eyes looked at me over the rim.
+
+"I don't quite understand this," I said.  "In what way?"
+
+He unbent a little and explained without too much scorn that Captain
+Harry being dead, his half of the insurance money went to his wife, and
+her trustees of course bought consols with it.  Enough to keep her
+comfortable.  George Dunbar's half, as Cloete feared from the first, did
+not prove sufficient to launch the medicine well; other moneyed men
+stepped in, and these two had to go out of that business, pretty nearly
+shorn of everything.
+
+"I am curious," I said, "to learn what the motive force of this tragic
+affair was--I mean the patent medicine.  Do you know?"
+
+He named it, and I whistled respectfully.  Nothing less than Parker's
+Lively Lumbago Pills.  Enormous property!  You know it; all the world
+knows it.  Every second man, at least, on this globe of ours has tried
+it.
+
+"Why!" I cried, "they missed an immense fortune."
+
+"Yes," he mumbled, "by the price of a revolver-shot."
+
+He told me also that eventually Cloete returned to the States, passenger
+in a cargo-boat from Albert Dock.  The night before he sailed he met him
+wandering about the quays, and took him home for a drink.  "Funny chap,
+Cloete.  We sat all night drinking grogs, till it was time for him to go
+on board."
+
+It was then that Cloete, unembittered but weary, told him this story,
+with that utterly unconscious frankness of a patent-medicine man stranger
+to all moral standards.  Cloete concluded by remarking that he, had "had
+enough of the old country."  George Dunbar had turned on him, too, in the
+end.  Cloete was clearly somewhat disillusioned.
+
+As to Stafford, he died, professed loafer, in some East End hospital or
+other, and on his last day clamoured "for a parson," because his
+conscience worried him for killing an innocent man.  "Wanted somebody to
+tell him it was all right," growled my old ruffian, contemptuously.  "He
+told the parson that I knew this Cloete who had tried to murder him, and
+so the parson (he worked among the dock labourers) once spoke to me about
+it.  That skunk of a fellow finding himself trapped yelled for mercy. . .
+Promised to be good and so on. . . Then he went crazy . . . screamed and
+threw himself about, beat his head against the bulkheads . . . you can
+guess all that--eh? . . . till he was exhausted.  Gave up.  Threw himself
+down, shut his eyes, and wanted to pray.  So he says.  Tried to think of
+some prayer for a quick death--he was that terrified.  Thought that if he
+had a knife or something he would cut his throat, and be done with it.
+Then he thinks: No!  Would try to cut away the wood about the lock. . .
+He had no knife in his pocket. . . he was weeping and calling on God to
+send him a tool of some kind when suddenly he thinks: Axe!  In most ships
+there is a spare emergency axe kept in the master's room in some locker
+or other. . . Up he jumps. . . Pitch dark.  Pulls at the drawers to find
+matches and, groping for them, the first thing he comes upon--Captain
+Harry's revolver.  Loaded too.  He goes perfectly quiet all over.  Can
+shoot the lock to pieces.  See?  Saved!  God's providence!  There are
+boxes of matches too.  Thinks he: I may just as well see what I am about.
+
+"Strikes a light and sees the little canvas bag tucked away at the back
+of the drawer.  Knew at once what that was.  Rams it into his pocket
+quick.  Aha! says he to himself: this requires more light.  So he pitches
+a lot of paper on the floor, set fire to it, and starts in a hurry
+rummaging for more valuables.  Did you ever?  He told that East-End
+parson that the devil tempted him.  First God's mercy--then devil's work.
+Turn and turn about. . .
+
+"Any squirming skunk can talk like that.  He was so busy with the drawers
+that the first thing he heard was a shout, Great Heavens.  He looks up
+and there was the door open (Cloete had left the key in the lock) and
+Captain Harry holding on, well above him, very fierce in the light of the
+burning papers.  His eyes were starting out of his head.  Thieving, he
+thunders at him.  A sailor!  An officer!  No!  A wretch like you deserves
+no better than to be left here to drown.
+
+"This Stafford--on his death-bed--told the parson that when he heard
+these words he went crazy again.  He snatched his hand with the revolver
+in it out of the drawer, and fired without aiming.  Captain Harry fell
+right in with a crash like a stone on top of the burning papers, putting
+the blaze out.  All dark.  Not a sound.  He listened for a bit then
+dropped the revolver and scrambled out on deck like mad."
+
+The old fellow struck the table with his ponderous fist.
+
+"What makes me sick is to hear these silly boat-men telling people the
+captain committed suicide.  Pah!  Captain Harry was a man that could face
+his Maker any time up there, and here below, too.  He wasn't the sort to
+slink out of life.  Not he!  He was a good man down to the ground.  He
+gave me my first job as stevedore only three days after I got married."
+
+As the vindication of Captain Harry from the charge of suicide seemed to
+be his only object, I did not thank him very effusively for his material.
+And then it was not worth many thanks in any case.
+
+For it is too startling even to think of such things happening in our
+respectable Channel in full view, so to speak, of the luxurious
+continental traffic to Switzerland and Monte Carlo.  This story to be
+acceptable should have been transposed to somewhere in the South Seas.
+But it would have been too much trouble to cook it for the consumption of
+magazine readers.  So here it is raw, so to speak--just as it was told to
+me--but unfortunately robbed of the striking effect of the narrator; the
+most imposing old ruffian that ever followed the unromantic trade of
+master stevedore in the port of London.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Oct._ 1910.
+
+
+
+
+THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES
+A FIND
+
+
+This tale, episode, experience--call it how you will--was related in the
+fifties of the last century by a man who, by his own confession, was
+sixty years old at the time.  Sixty is not a bad age--unless in
+perspective, when no doubt it is contemplated by the majority of us with
+mixed feelings.  It is a calm age; the game is practically over by then;
+and standing aside one begins to remember with a certain vividness what a
+fine fellow one used to be.  I have observed that, by an amiable
+attention of Providence, most people at sixty begin to take a romantic
+view of themselves.  Their very failures exhale a charm of peculiar
+potency.  And indeed the hopes of the future are a fine company to live
+with, exquisite forms, fascinating if you like, but--so to speak--naked,
+stripped for a run.  The robes of glamour are luckily the property of the
+immovable past which, without them, would sit, a shivery sort of thing,
+under the gathering shadows.
+
+I suppose it was the romanticism of growing age which set our man to
+relate his experience for his own satisfaction or for the wonder of his
+posterity.  It could not have been for his glory, because the experience
+was simply that of an abominable fright--terror he calls it.  You would
+have guessed that the relation alluded to in the very first lines was in
+writing.
+
+This writing constitutes the Find declared in the sub-title.  The title
+itself is my own contrivance, (can't call it invention), and has the
+merit of veracity.  We will be concerned with an inn here.  As to the
+witches that's merely a conventional expression, and we must take our
+man's word for it that it fits the case.
+
+The Find was made in a box of books bought in London, in a street which
+no longer exists, from a second-hand bookseller in the last stage of
+decay.  As to the books themselves they were at least twentieth-hand, and
+on inspection turned out not worth the very small sum of money I
+disbursed.  It might have been some premonition of that fact which made
+me say: "But I must have the box too."  The decayed bookseller assented
+by the careless, tragic gesture of a man already doomed to extinction.
+
+A litter of loose pages at the bottom of the box excited my curiosity but
+faintly.  The close, neat, regular handwriting was not attractive at
+first sight.  But in one place the statement that in A.D. 1813 the writer
+was twenty-two years old caught my eye.  Two and twenty is an interesting
+age in which one is easily reckless and easily frightened; the faculty of
+reflection being weak and the power of imagination strong.
+
+In another place the phrase: "At night we stood in again," arrested my
+languid attention, because it was a sea phrase.  "Let's see what it is
+all about," I thought, without excitement.
+
+Oh! but it was a dull-faced MS., each line resembling every other line in
+their close-set and regular order.  It was like the drone of a monotonous
+voice.  A treatise on sugar-refining (the dreariest subject I can think
+of) could have been given a more lively appearance.  "In A.D. 1813, I was
+twenty-two years old," he begins earnestly and goes on with every
+appearance of calm, horrible industry.  Don't imagine, however, that
+there is anything archaic in my find.  Diabolic ingenuity in invention
+though as old as the world is by no means a lost art.  Look at the
+telephones for shattering the little peace of mind given to us in this
+world, or at the machine guns for letting with dispatch life out of our
+bodies.  Now-a-days any blear-eyed old witch if only strong enough to
+turn an insignificant little handle could lay low a hundred young men of
+twenty in the twinkling of an eye.
+
+If this isn't progress! . . . Why immense!  We have moved on, and so you
+must expect to meet here a certain naiveness of contrivance and
+simplicity of aim appertaining to the remote epoch.  And of course no
+motoring tourist can hope to find such an inn anywhere, now.  This one,
+the one of the title, was situated in Spain.  That much I discovered only
+from internal evidence, because a good many pages of that relation were
+missing--perhaps not a great misfortune after all.  The writer seemed to
+have entered into a most elaborate detail of the why and wherefore of his
+presence on that coast--presumably the north coast of Spain.  His
+experience has nothing to do with the sea, though.  As far as I can make
+it out, he was an officer on board a sloop-of-war.  There's nothing
+strange in that.  At all stages of the long Peninsular campaign many of
+our men-of-war of the smaller kind were cruising off the north coast of
+Spain--as risky and disagreeable a station as can be well imagined.
+
+It looks as though that ship of his had had some special service to
+perform.  A careful explanation of all the circumstances was to be
+expected from our man, only, as I've said, some of his pages (good tough
+paper too) were missing: gone in covers for jampots or in wadding for the
+fowling-pieces of his irreverent posterity.  But it is to be seen clearly
+that communication with the shore and even the sending of messengers
+inland was part of her service, either to obtain intelligence from or to
+transmit orders or advice to patriotic Spaniards, guerilleros or secret
+juntas of the province.  Something of the sort.  All this can be only
+inferred from the preserved scraps of his conscientious writing.
+
+Next we come upon the panegyric of a very fine sailor, a member of the
+ship's company, having the rating of the captain's coxswain.  He was
+known on board as Cuba Tom; not because he was Cuban however; he was
+indeed the best type of a genuine British tar of that time, and a
+man-of-war's man for years.  He came by the name on account of some
+wonderful adventures he had in that island in his young days, adventures
+which were the favourite subject of the yarns he was in the habit of
+spinning to his shipmates of an evening on the forecastle head.  He was
+intelligent, very strong, and of proved courage.  Incidentally we are
+told, so exact is our narrator, that Tom had the finest pigtail for
+thickness and length of any man in the Navy.  This appendage, much cared
+for and sheathed tightly in a porpoise skin, hung half way down his broad
+back to the great admiration of all beholders and to the great envy of
+some.
+
+Our young officer dwells on the manly qualities of Cuba Tom with
+something like affection.  This sort of relation between officer and man
+was not then very rare.  A youngster on joining the service was put under
+the charge of a trustworthy seaman, who slung his first hammock for him
+and often later on became a sort of humble friend to the junior officer.
+The narrator on joining the sloop had found this man on board after some
+years of separation.  There is something touching in the warm pleasure he
+remembers and records at this meeting with the professional mentor of his
+boyhood.
+
+We discover then that, no Spaniard being forthcoming for the service,
+this worthy seaman with the unique pigtail and a very high character for
+courage and steadiness had been selected as messenger for one of these
+missions inland which have been mentioned.  His preparations were not
+elaborate.  One gloomy autumn morning the sloop ran close to a shallow
+cove where a landing could be made on that iron-bound shore.  A boat was
+lowered, and pulled in with Tom Corbin (Cuba Tom) perched in the bow, and
+our young man (Mr. Edgar Byrne was his name on this earth which knows him
+no more) sitting in the stern sheets.
+
+A few inhabitants of a hamlet, whose grey stone houses could be seen a
+hundred yards or so up a deep ravine, had come down to the shore and
+watched the approach of the boat.  The two Englishmen leaped ashore.
+Either from dullness or astonishment the peasants gave no greeting, and
+only fell back in silence.
+
+Mr. Byrne had made up his mind to see Tom Corbin started fairly on his
+way.  He looked round at the heavy surprised faces.
+
+"There isn't much to get out of them," he said.  "Let us walk up to the
+village.  There will be a wine shop for sure where we may find somebody
+more promising to talk to and get some information from."
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," said Tom falling into step behind his officer.  "A bit
+of palaver as to courses and distances can do no harm; I crossed the
+broadest part of Cuba by the help of my tongue tho' knowing far less
+Spanish than I do now.  As they say themselves it was 'four words and no
+more' with me, that time when I got left behind on shore by the
+_Blanche_, frigate."
+
+He made light of what was before him, which was but a day's journey into
+the mountains.  It is true that there was a full day's journey before
+striking the mountain path, but that was nothing for a man who had
+crossed the island of Cuba on his two legs, and with no more than four
+words of the language to begin with.
+
+The officer and the man were walking now on a thick sodden bed of dead
+leaves, which the peasants thereabouts accumulate in the streets of their
+villages to rot during the winter for field manure.  Turning his head Mr.
+Byrne perceived that the whole male population of the hamlet was
+following them on the noiseless springy carpet.  Women stared from the
+doors of the houses and the children had apparently gone into hiding.
+The village knew the ship by sight, afar off, but no stranger had landed
+on that spot perhaps for a hundred years or more.  The cocked hat of Mr.
+Byrne, the bushy whiskers and the enormous pigtail of the sailor, filled
+them with mute wonder.  They pressed behind the two Englishmen staring
+like those islanders discovered by Captain Cook in the South Seas.
+
+It was then that Byrne had his first glimpse of the little cloaked man in
+a yellow hat.  Faded and dingy as it was, this covering for his head made
+him noticeable.
+
+The entrance to the wine shop was like a rough hole in a wall of flints.
+The owner was the only person who was not in the street, for he came out
+from the darkness at the back where the inflated forms of wine skins hung
+on nails could be vaguely distinguished.  He was a tall, one-eyed
+Asturian with scrubby, hollow cheeks; a grave expression of countenance
+contrasted enigmatically with the roaming restlessness of his solitary
+eye.  On learning that the matter in hand was the sending on his way of
+that English mariner toward a certain Gonzales in the mountains, he
+closed his good eye for a moment as if in meditation.  Then opened it,
+very lively again.
+
+"Possibly, possibly.  It could be done."
+
+A friendly murmur arose in the group in the doorway at the name of
+Gonzales, the local leader against the French.  Inquiring as to the
+safety of the road Byrne was glad to learn that no troops of that nation
+had been seen in the neighbourhood for months.  Not the smallest little
+detachment of these impious _polizones_.  While giving these answers the
+owner of the wine-shop busied himself in drawing into an earthenware jug
+some wine which he set before the heretic English, pocketing with grave
+abstraction the small piece of money the officer threw upon the table in
+recognition of the unwritten law that none may enter a wine-shop without
+buying drink.  His eye was in constant motion as if it were trying to do
+the work of the two; but when Byrne made inquiries as to the possibility
+of hiring a mule, it became immovably fixed in the direction of the door
+which was closely besieged by the curious.  In front of them, just within
+the threshold, the little man in the large cloak and yellow hat had taken
+his stand.  He was a diminutive person, a mere homunculus, Byrne
+describes him, in a ridiculously mysterious, yet assertive attitude, a
+corner of his cloak thrown cavalierly over his left shoulder, muffling
+his chin and mouth; while the broad-brimmed yellow hat hung on a corner
+of his square little head.  He stood there taking snuff, repeatedly.
+
+"A mule," repeated the wine-seller, his eyes fixed on that quaint and
+snuffy figure. . . "No, senor officer!  Decidedly no mule is to be got in
+this poor place."
+
+The coxswain, who stood by with the true sailor's air of unconcern in
+strange surroundings, struck in quietly--
+
+"If your honour will believe me Shank's pony's the best for this job.  I
+would have to leave the beast somewhere, anyhow, since the captain has
+told me that half my way will be along paths fit only for goats."
+
+The diminutive man made a step forward, and speaking through the folds of
+the cloak which seemed to muffle a sarcastic intention--
+
+"Si, senor.  They are too honest in this village to have a single mule
+amongst them for your worship's service.  To that I can bear testimony.
+In these times it's only rogues or very clever men who can manage to have
+mules or any other four-footed beasts and the wherewithal to keep them.
+But what this valiant mariner wants is a guide; and here, senor, behold
+my brother-in-law, Bernardino, wine-seller, and alcade of this most
+Christian and hospitable village, who will find you one."
+
+This, Mr. Byrne says in his relation, was the only thing to do.  A youth
+in a ragged coat and goat-skin breeches was produced after some more
+talk.  The English officer stood treat to the whole village, and while
+the peasants drank he and Cuba Tom took their departure accompanied by
+the guide.  The diminutive man in the cloak had disappeared.
+
+Byrne went along with the coxswain out of the village.  He wanted to see
+him fairly on his way; and he would have gone a greater distance, if the
+seaman had not suggested respectfully the advisability of return so as
+not to keep the ship a moment longer than necessary so close in with the
+shore on such an unpromising looking morning.  A wild gloomy sky hung
+over their heads when they took leave of each other, and their
+surroundings of rank bushes and stony fields were dreary.
+
+"In four days' time," were Byrne's last words, "the ship will stand in
+and send a boat on shore if the weather permits.  If not you'll have to
+make it out on shore the best you can till we come along to take you
+off."
+
+"Right you are, sir," answered Tom, and strode on.  Byrne watched him
+step out on a narrow path.  In a thick pea-jacket with a pair of pistols
+in his belt, a cutlass by his side, and a stout cudgel in his hand, he
+looked a sturdy figure and well able to take care of himself.  He turned
+round for a moment to wave his hand, giving to Byrne one more view of his
+honest bronzed face with bushy whiskers.  The lad in goatskin breeches
+looking, Byrne says, like a faun or a young satyr leaping ahead, stopped
+to wait for him, and then went off at a bound.  Both disappeared.
+
+Byrne turned back.  The hamlet was hidden in a fold of the ground, and
+the spot seemed the most lonely corner of the earth and as if accursed in
+its uninhabited desolate barrenness.  Before he had walked many yards,
+there appeared very suddenly from behind a bush the muffled up diminutive
+Spaniard.  Naturally Byrne stopped short.
+
+The other made a mysterious gesture with a tiny hand peeping from under
+his cloak.  His hat hung very much at the side of his head.  "Senor," he
+said without any preliminaries.  "Caution!  It is a positive fact that
+one-eyed Bernardino, my brother-in-law, has at this moment a mule in his
+stable.  And why he who is not clever has a mule there?  Because he is a
+rogue; a man without conscience.  Because I had to give up the _macho_ to
+him to secure for myself a roof to sleep under and a mouthful of _olla_
+to keep my soul in this insignificant body of mine.  Yet, senor, it
+contains a heart many times bigger than the mean thing which beats in the
+breast of that brute connection of mine of which I am ashamed, though I
+opposed that marriage with all my power.  Well, the misguided woman
+suffered enough.  She had her purgatory on this earth--God rest her
+soul."
+
+Byrne says he was so astonished by the sudden appearance of that
+sprite-like being, and by the sardonic bitterness of the speech, that he
+was unable to disentangle the significant fact from what seemed but a
+piece of family history fired out at him without rhyme or reason.  Not at
+first.  He was confounded and at the same time he was impressed by the
+rapid forcible delivery, quite different from the frothy excited
+loquacity of an Italian.  So he stared while the homunculus letting his
+cloak fall about him, aspired an immense quantity of snuff out of the
+hollow of his palm.
+
+"A mule," exclaimed Byrne seizing at last the real aspect of the
+discourse.  "You say he has got a mule?  That's queer!  Why did he refuse
+to let me have it?"
+
+The diminutive Spaniard muffled himself up again with great dignity.
+
+"_Quien sabe_," he said coldly, with a shrug of his draped shoulders.
+"He is a great _politico_ in everything he does.  But one thing your
+worship may be certain of--that his intentions are always rascally.  This
+husband of my _defunta_ sister ought to have been married a long time ago
+to the widow with the wooden legs." {188}
+
+"I see.  But remember that, whatever your motives, your worship
+countenanced him in this lie."
+
+The bright unhappy eyes on each side of a predatory nose confronted Byrne
+without wincing, while with that testiness which lurks so often at the
+bottom of Spanish dignity--
+
+"No doubt the senor officer would not lose an ounce of blood if I were
+stuck under the fifth rib," he retorted.  "But what of this poor sinner
+here?"  Then changing his tone.  "Senor, by the necessities of the times
+I live here in exile, a Castilian and an old Christian, existing
+miserably in the midst of these brute Asturians, and dependent on the
+worst of them all, who has less conscience and scruples than a wolf.  And
+being a man of intelligence I govern myself accordingly.  Yet I can
+hardly contain my scorn.  You have heard the way I spoke.  A caballero of
+parts like your worship might have guessed that there was a cat in
+there."
+
+"What cat?" said Byrne uneasily.  "Oh, I see.  Something suspicious.  No,
+senor.  I guessed nothing.  My nation are not good guessers at that sort
+of thing; and, therefore, I ask you plainly whether that wine-seller has
+spoken the truth in other particulars?"
+
+"There are certainly no Frenchmen anywhere about," said the little man
+with a return to his indifferent manner.
+
+"Or robbers--_ladrones_?"
+
+"_Ladrones en grande_--no!  Assuredly not," was the answer in a cold
+philosophical tone.  "What is there left for them to do after the French?
+And nobody travels in these times.  But who can say!  Opportunity makes
+the robber.  Still that mariner of yours has a fierce aspect, and with
+the son of a cat rats will have no play.  But there is a saying, too,
+that where honey is there will soon be flies."
+
+This oracular discourse exasperated Byrne.  "In the name of God," he
+cried, "tell me plainly if you think my man is reasonably safe on his
+journey."
+
+The homunculus, undergoing one of his rapid changes, seized the officer's
+arm.  The grip of his little hand was astonishing.
+
+"Senor!  Bernardino had taken notice of him.  What more do you want?  And
+listen--men have disappeared on this road--on a certain portion of this
+road, when Bernardino kept a _meson_, an inn, and I, his brother-in-law,
+had coaches and mules for hire.  Now there are no travellers, no coaches.
+The French have ruined me.  Bernardino has retired here for reasons of
+his own after my sister died.  They were three to torment the life out of
+her, he and Erminia and Lucilla, two aunts of his--all affiliated to the
+devil.  And now he has robbed me of my last mule.  You are an armed man.
+Demand the _macho_ from him, with a pistol to his head, senor--it is not
+his, I tell you--and ride after your man who is so precious to you.  And
+then you shall both be safe, for no two travellers have been ever known
+to disappear together in these days.  As to the beast, I, its owner, I
+confide it to your honour."
+
+They were staring hard at each other, and Byrne nearly burst into a laugh
+at the ingenuity and transparency of the little man's plot to regain
+possession of his mule.  But he had no difficulty to keep a straight face
+because he felt deep within himself a strange inclination to do that very
+extraordinary thing.  He did not laugh, but his lip quivered; at which
+the diminutive Spaniard, detaching his black glittering eyes from Byrne's
+face, turned his back on him brusquely with a gesture and a fling of the
+cloak which somehow expressed contempt, bitterness, and discouragement
+all at once.  He turned away and stood still, his hat aslant, muffled up
+to the ears.  But he was not offended to the point of refusing the silver
+_duro_ which Byrne offered him with a non-committal speech as if nothing
+extraordinary had passed between them.
+
+"I must make haste on board now," said Byrne, then.
+
+"_Vaya usted con Dios_," muttered the gnome.  And this interview ended
+with a sarcastic low sweep of the hat which was replaced at the same
+perilous angle as before.
+
+Directly the boat had been hoisted the ship's sails were filled on the
+off-shore tack, and Byrne imparted the whole story to his captain, who
+was but a very few years older than himself.  There was some amused
+indignation at it--but while they laughed they looked gravely at each
+other.  A Spanish dwarf trying to beguile an officer of his majesty's
+navy into stealing a mule for him--that was too funny, too ridiculous,
+too incredible.  Those were the exclamations of the captain.  He couldn't
+get over the grotesqueness of it.
+
+"Incredible.  That's just it," murmured Byrne at last in a significant
+tone.
+
+They exchanged a long stare.  "It's as clear as daylight," affirmed the
+captain impatiently, because in his heart he was not certain.  And Tom
+the best seaman in the ship for one, the good-humouredly deferential
+friend of his boyhood for the other, was becoming endowed with a
+compelling fascination, like a symbolic figure of loyalty appealing to
+their feelings and their conscience, so that they could not detach their
+thoughts from his safety.  Several times they went up on deck, only to
+look at the coast, as if it could tell them something of his fate.  It
+stretched away, lengthening in the distance, mute, naked, and savage,
+veiled now and then by the slanting cold shafts of rain.  The westerly
+swell rolled its interminable angry lines of foam and big dark clouds
+flew over the ship in a sinister procession.
+
+"I wish to goodness you had done what your little friend in the yellow
+hat wanted you to do," said the commander of the sloop late in the
+afternoon with visible exasperation.
+
+"Do you, sir?" answered Byrne, bitter with positive anguish.  "I wonder
+what you would have said afterwards?  Why!  I might have been kicked out
+of the service for looting a mule from a nation in alliance with His
+Majesty.  Or I might have been battered to a pulp with flails and
+pitch-forks--a pretty tale to get abroad about one of your
+officers--while trying to steal a mule.  Or chased ignominiously to the
+boat--for you would not have expected me to shoot down unoffending people
+for the sake of a mangy mule. . . And yet," he added in a low voice, "I
+almost wish myself I had done it."
+
+Before dark those two young men had worked themselves up into a highly
+complex psychological state of scornful scepticism and alarmed credulity.
+It tormented them exceedingly; and the thought that it would have to last
+for six days at least, and possibly be prolonged further for an
+indefinite time, was not to be borne.  The ship was therefore put on the
+inshore tack at dark.  All through the gusty dark night she went towards
+the land to look for her man, at times lying over in the heavy puffs, at
+others rolling idle in the swell, nearly stationary, as if she too had a
+mind of her own to swing perplexed between cool reason and warm impulse.
+
+Then just at daybreak a boat put off from her and went on tossed by the
+seas towards the shallow cove where, with considerable difficulty, an
+officer in a thick coat and a round hat managed to land on a strip of
+shingle.
+
+"It was my wish," writes Mr. Byrne, "a wish of which my captain approved,
+to land secretly if possible.  I did not want to be seen either by my
+aggrieved friend in the yellow hat, whose motives were not clear, or by
+the one-eyed wine-seller, who may or may not have been affiliated to the
+devil, or indeed by any other dweller in that primitive village.  But
+unfortunately the cove was the only possible landing place for miles; and
+from the steepness of the ravine I couldn't make a circuit to avoid the
+houses."
+
+"Fortunately," he goes on, "all the people were yet in their beds.  It
+was barely daylight when I found myself walking on the thick layer of
+sodden leaves filling the only street.  No soul was stirring abroad, no
+dog barked.  The silence was profound, and I had concluded with some
+wonder that apparently no dogs were kept in the hamlet, when I heard a
+low snarl, and from a noisome alley between two hovels emerged a vile cur
+with its tail between its legs.  He slunk off silently showing me his
+teeth as he ran before me, and he disappeared so suddenly that he might
+have been the unclean incarnation of the Evil One.  There was, too,
+something so weird in the manner of its coming and vanishing, that my
+spirits, already by no means very high, became further depressed by the
+revolting sight of this creature as if by an unlucky presage."
+
+He got away from the coast unobserved, as far as he knew, then struggled
+manfully to the west against wind and rain, on a barren dark upland,
+under a sky of ashes.  Far away the harsh and desolate mountains raising
+their scarped and denuded ridges seemed to wait for him menacingly.  The
+evening found him fairly near to them, but, in sailor language, uncertain
+of his position, hungry, wet, and tired out by a day of steady tramping
+over broken ground during which he had seen very few people, and had been
+unable to obtain the slightest intelligence of Tom Corbin's passage.
+"On! on! I must push on," he had been saying to himself through the hours
+of solitary effort, spurred more by incertitude than by any definite fear
+or definite hope.
+
+The lowering daylight died out quickly, leaving him faced by a broken
+bridge.  He descended into the ravine, forded a narrow stream by the last
+gleam of rapid water, and clambering out on the other side was met by the
+night which fell like a bandage over his eyes.  The wind sweeping in the
+darkness the broadside of the sierra worried his ears by a continuous
+roaring noise as of a maddened sea.  He suspected that he had lost the
+road.  Even in daylight, with its ruts and mud-holes and ledges of
+outcropping stone, it was difficult to distinguish from the dreary waste
+of the moor interspersed with boulders and clumps of naked bushes.  But,
+as he says, "he steered his course by the feel of the wind," his hat
+rammed low on his brow, his head down, stopping now and again from mere
+weariness of mind rather than of body--as if not his strength but his
+resolution were being overtaxed by the strain of endeavour half suspected
+to be vain, and by the unrest of his feelings.
+
+In one of these pauses borne in the wind faintly as if from very far away
+he heard a sound of knocking, just knocking on wood.  He noticed that the
+wind had lulled suddenly.
+
+His heart started beating tumultuously because in himself he carried the
+impression of the desert solitudes he had been traversing for the last
+six hours--the oppressive sense of an uninhabited world.  When he raised
+his head a gleam of light, illusory as it often happens in dense
+darkness, swam before his eyes.  While he peered, the sound of feeble
+knocking was repeated--and suddenly he felt rather than saw the existence
+of a massive obstacle in his path.  What was it?  The spur of a hill?  Or
+was it a house!  Yes.  It was a house right close, as though it had risen
+from the ground or had come gliding to meet him, dumb and pallid; from
+some dark recess of the night.  It towered loftily.  He had come up under
+its lee; another three steps and he could have touched the wall with his
+hand.  It was no doubt a _posada_ and some other traveller was trying for
+admittance.  He heard again the sound of cautious knocking.
+
+Next moment a broad band of light fell into the night through the opened
+door.  Byrne stepped eagerly into it, whereupon the person outside leaped
+with a stifled cry away into the night.  An exclamation of surprise was
+heard too, from within.  Byrne, flinging himself against the half closed
+door, forced his way in against some considerable resistance.
+
+A miserable candle, a mere rushlight, burned at the end of a long deal
+table.  And in its light Byrne saw, staggering yet, the girl he had
+driven from the door.  She had a short black skirt, an orange shawl, a
+dark complexion--and the escaped single hairs from the mass, sombre and
+thick like a forest and held up by a comb, made a black mist about her
+low forehead.  A shrill lamentable howl of: "Misericordia!" came in two
+voices from the further end of the long room, where the fire-light of an
+open hearth played between heavy shadows.  The girl recovering herself
+drew a hissing breath through her set teeth.
+
+It is unnecessary to report the long process of questions and answers by
+which he soothed the fears of two old women who sat on each side of the
+fire, on which stood a large earthenware pot.  Byrne thought at once of
+two witches watching the brewing of some deadly potion.  But all the
+same, when one of them raising forward painfully her broken form lifted
+the cover of the pot, the escaping steam had an appetising smell.  The
+other did not budge, but sat hunched up, her head trembling all the time.
+
+They were horrible.  There was something grotesque in their decrepitude.
+Their toothless mouths, their hooked noses, the meagreness of the active
+one, and the hanging yellow cheeks of the other (the still one, whose
+head trembled) would have been laughable if the sight of their dreadful
+physical degradation had not been appalling to one's eyes, had not
+gripped one's heart with poignant amazement at the unspeakable misery of
+age, at the awful persistency of life becoming at last an object of
+disgust and dread.
+
+To get over it Byrne began to talk, saying that he was an Englishman, and
+that he was in search of a countryman who ought to have passed this way.
+Directly he had spoken the recollection of his parting with Tom came up
+in his mind with amazing vividness: the silent villagers, the angry
+gnome, the one-eyed wine-seller, Bernardino.  Why!  These two unspeakable
+frights must be that man's aunts--affiliated to the devil.
+
+Whatever they had been once it was impossible to imagine what use such
+feeble creatures could be to the devil, now, in the world of the living.
+Which was Lucilla and which was Erminia?  They were now things without a
+name.  A moment of suspended animation followed Byrne's words.  The
+sorceress with the spoon ceased stirring the mess in the iron pot, the
+very trembling of the other's head stopped for the space of breath.  In
+this infinitesimal fraction of a second Byrne had the sense of being
+really on his quest, of having reached the turn of the path, almost
+within hail of Tom.
+
+"They have seen him," he thought with conviction.  Here was at last
+somebody who had seen him.  He made sure they would deny all knowledge of
+the Ingles; but on the contrary they were eager to tell him that he had
+eaten and slept the night in the house.  They both started talking
+together, describing his appearance and behaviour.  An excitement quite
+fierce in its feebleness possessed them.  The doubled-up sorceress
+flourished aloft her wooden spoon, the puffy monster got off her stool
+and screeched, stepping from one foot to the other, while the trembling
+of her head was accelerated to positive vibration.  Byrne was quite
+disconcerted by their excited behaviour. . . Yes!  The big, fierce Ingles
+went away in the morning, after eating a piece of bread and drinking some
+wine.  And if the caballero wished to follow the same path nothing could
+be easier--in the morning.
+
+"You will give me somebody to show me the way?" said Byrne.
+
+"Si, senor.  A proper youth.  The man the caballero saw going out."
+
+"But he was knocking at the door," protested Byrne.  "He only bolted when
+he saw me.  He was coming in."
+
+"No!  No!" the two horrid witches screamed out together.  "Going out.
+Going out!"
+
+After all it may have been true. The sound of knocking had been faint,
+elusive, reflected Byrne.  Perhaps only the effect of his fancy.  He
+asked--
+
+"Who is that man?"
+
+"Her _novio_."  They screamed pointing to the girl.  "He is gone home to
+a village far away from here.  But he will return in the morning.  Her
+_novio_!  And she is an orphan--the child of poor Christian people.  She
+lives with us for the love of God, for the love of God."
+
+The orphan crouching on the corner of the hearth had been looking at
+Byrne.  He thought that she was more like a child of Satan kept there by
+these two weird harridans for the love of the Devil.  Her eyes were a
+little oblique, her mouth rather thick, but admirably formed; her dark
+face had a wild beauty, voluptuous and untamed.  As to the character of
+her steadfast gaze attached upon him with a sensuously savage attention,
+"to know what it was like," says Mr. Byrne, "you have only to observe a
+hungry cat watching a bird in a cage or a mouse inside a trap."
+
+It was she who served him the food, of which he was glad; though with
+those big slanting black eyes examining him at close range, as if he had
+something curious written on his face, she gave him an uncomfortable
+sensation.  But anything was better than being approached by these
+blear-eyed nightmarish witches.  His apprehensions somehow had been
+soothed; perhaps by the sensation of warmth after severe exposure and the
+ease of resting after the exertion of fighting the gale inch by inch all
+the way.  He had no doubt of Tom's safety.  He was now sleeping in the
+mountain camp having been met by Gonzales' men.
+
+Byrne rose, filled a tin goblet with wine out of a skin hanging on the
+wall, and sat down again.  The witch with the mummy face began to talk to
+him, ramblingly of old times; she boasted of the inn's fame in those
+better days.  Great people in their own coaches stopped there.  An
+archbishop slept once in the _casa_, a long, long time ago.
+
+The witch with the puffy face seemed to be listening from her stool,
+motionless, except for the trembling of her head.  The girl (Byrne was
+certain she was a casual gipsy admitted there for some reason or other)
+sat on the hearth stone in the glow of the embers.  She hummed a tune to
+herself, rattling a pair of castanets slightly now and then.  At the
+mention of the archbishop she chuckled impiously and turned her head to
+look at Byrne, so that the red glow of the fire flashed in her black eyes
+and on her white teeth under the dark cowl of the enormous overmantel.
+And he smiled at her.
+
+He rested now in the ease of security.  His advent not having been
+expected there could be no plot against him in existence.  Drowsiness
+stole upon his senses.  He enjoyed it, but keeping a hold, so he thought
+at least, on his wits; but he must have been gone further than he thought
+because he was startled beyond measure by a fiendish uproar.  He had
+never heard anything so pitilessly strident in his life.  The witches had
+started a fierce quarrel about something or other.  Whatever its origin
+they were now only abusing each other violently, without arguments; their
+senile screams expressed nothing but wicked anger and ferocious dismay.
+The gipsy girl's black eyes flew from one to the other.  Never before had
+Byrne felt himself so removed from fellowship with human beings.  Before
+he had really time to understand the subject of the quarrel, the girl
+jumped up rattling her castanets loudly.  A silence fell.  She came up to
+the table and bending over, her eyes in his--
+
+"Senor," she said with decision, "You shall sleep in the archbishop's
+room."
+
+Neither of the witches objected.  The dried-up one bent double was
+propped on a stick.  The puffy faced one had now a crutch.
+
+Byrne got up, walked to the door, and turning the key in the enormous
+lock put it coolly in his pocket.  This was clearly the only entrance,
+and he did not mean to be taken unawares by whatever danger there might
+have been lurking outside.
+
+When he turned from the door he saw the two witches "affiliated to the
+Devil" and the Satanic girl looking at him in silence.  He wondered if
+Tom Corbin took the same precaution last might.  And thinking of him he
+had again that queer impression of his nearness.  The world was perfectly
+dumb.  And in this stillness he heard the blood beating in his ears with
+a confused rushing noise, in which there seemed to be a voice uttering
+the words: "Mr. Byrne, look out, sir."  Tom's voice.  He shuddered; for
+the delusions of the senses of hearing are the most vivid of all, and
+from their nature have a compelling character.
+
+It seemed impossible that Tom should not be there.  Again a slight chill
+as of stealthy draught penetrated through his very clothes and passed
+over all his body.  He shook off the impression with an effort.
+
+It was the girl who preceded him upstairs carrying an iron lamp from the
+naked flame of which ascended a thin thread of smoke.  Her soiled white
+stockings were full of holes.
+
+With the same quiet resolution with which he had locked the door below,
+Byrne threw open one after another the doors in the corridor.  All the
+rooms were empty except for some nondescript lumber in one or two.  And
+the girl seeing what he would be at stopped every time, raising the smoky
+light in each doorway patiently.  Meantime she observed him with
+sustained attention.  The last door of all she threw open herself.
+
+"You sleep here, senor," she murmured in a voice light like a child's
+breath, offering him the lamp.
+
+"_Buenos noches_, _senorita_," he said politely, taking it from her.
+
+She didn't return the wish audibly, though her lips did move a little,
+while her gaze black like a starless night never for a moment wavered
+before him.  He stepped in, and as he turned to close the door she was
+still there motionless and disturbing, with her voluptuous mouth and
+slanting eyes, with the expression of expectant sensual ferocity of a
+baffled cat.  He hesitated for a moment, and in the dumb house he heard
+again the blood pulsating ponderously in his ears, while once more the
+illusion of Tom's voice speaking earnestly somewhere near by was
+specially terrifying, because this time he could not make out the words.
+
+He slammed the door in the girl's face at last, leaving her in the dark;
+and he opened it again almost on the instant.  Nobody.  She had vanished
+without the slightest sound.  He closed the door quickly and bolted it
+with two heavy bolts.
+
+A profound mistrust possessed him suddenly.  Why did the witches quarrel
+about letting him sleep here?  And what meant that stare of the girl as
+if she wanted to impress his features for ever in her mind?  His own
+nervousness alarmed him.  He seemed to himself to be removed very far
+from mankind.
+
+He examined his room.  It was not very high, just high enough to take the
+bed which stood under an enormous baldaquin-like canopy from which fell
+heavy curtains at foot and head; a bed certainly worthy of an archbishop.
+There was a heavy table carved all round the edges, some arm-chairs of
+enormous weight like the spoils of a grandee's palace; a tall shallow
+wardrobe placed against the wall and with double doors.  He tried them.
+Locked.  A suspicion came into his mind, and he snatched the lamp to make
+a closer examination.  No, it was not a disguised entrance.  That heavy,
+tall piece of furniture stood clear of the wall by quite an inch.  He
+glanced at the bolts of his room door.  No!  No one could get at him
+treacherously while he slept.  But would he be able to sleep? he asked
+himself anxiously.  If only he had Tom there--the trusty seaman who had
+fought at his right hand in a cutting out affair or two, and had always
+preached to him the necessity to take care of himself.  "For it's no
+great trick," he used to say, "to get yourself killed in a hot fight.
+Any fool can do that.  The proper pastime is to fight the Frenchies and
+then live to fight another day."
+
+Byrne found it a hard matter not to fall into listening to the silence.
+Somehow he had the conviction that nothing would break it unless he heard
+again the haunting sound of Tom's voice.  He had heard it twice before.
+Odd!  And yet no wonder, he argued with himself reasonably, since he had
+been thinking of the man for over thirty hours continuously and, what's
+more, inconclusively.  For his anxiety for Tom had never taken a definite
+shape.  "Disappear," was the only word connected with the idea of Tom's
+danger.  It was very vague and awful.  "Disappear!"  What did that mean?
+
+Byrne shuddered, and then said to himself that he must be a little
+feverish.  But Tom had not disappeared.  Byrne had just heard of him.
+And again the young man felt the blood beating in his ears.  He sat still
+expecting every moment to hear through the pulsating strokes the sound of
+Tom's voice.  He waited straining his ears, but nothing came.  Suddenly
+the thought occurred to him: "He has not disappeared, but he cannot make
+himself heard."
+
+He jumped up from the arm-chair.  How absurd!  Laying his pistol and his
+hanger on the table he took off his boots and, feeling suddenly too tired
+to stand, flung himself on the bed which he found soft and comfortable
+beyond his hopes.
+
+He had felt very wakeful, but he must have dozed off after all, because
+the next thing he knew he was sitting up in bed and trying to recollect
+what it was that Tom's voice had said.  Oh!  He remembered it now.  It
+had said: "Mr. Byrne!  Look out, sir!"  A warning this.  But against
+what?
+
+He landed with one leap in the middle of the floor, gasped once, then
+looked all round the room.  The window was shuttered and barred with an
+iron bar.  Again he ran his eyes slowly all round the bare walls, and
+even looked up at the ceiling, which was rather high.  Afterwards he went
+to the door to examine the fastenings.  They consisted of two enormous
+iron bolts sliding into holes made in the wall; and as the corridor
+outside was too narrow to admit of any battering arrangement or even to
+permit an axe to be swung, nothing could burst the door open--unless
+gunpowder.  But while he was still making sure that the lower bolt was
+pushed well home, he received the impression of somebody's presence in
+the room.  It was so strong that he spun round quicker than lightning.
+There was no one.  Who could there be?  And yet . . .
+
+It was then that he lost the decorum and restraint a man keeps up for his
+own sake.  He got down on his hands and knees, with the lamp on the
+floor, to look under the bed, like a silly girl.  He saw a lot of dust
+and nothing else.  He got up, his cheeks burning, and walked about
+discontented with his own behaviour and unreasonably angry with Tom for
+not leaving him alone.  The words: "Mr. Byrne!  Look out, sir," kept on
+repeating themselves in his head in a tone of warning.
+
+"Hadn't I better just throw myself on the bed and try to go to sleep," he
+asked himself.  But his eyes fell on the tall wardrobe, and he went
+towards it feeling irritated with himself and yet unable to desist.  How
+he could explain to-morrow the burglarious misdeed to the two odious
+witches he had no idea.  Nevertheless he inserted the point of his hanger
+between the two halves of the door and tried to prize them open.  They
+resisted.  He swore, sticking now hotly to his purpose.  His mutter: "I
+hope you will be satisfied, confound you," was addressed to the absent
+Tom.  Just then the doors gave way and flew open.
+
+He was there.
+
+He--the trusty, sagacious, and courageous Tom was there, drawn up shadowy
+and stiff, in a prudent silence, which his wide-open eyes by their fixed
+gleam seemed to command Byrne to respect.  But Byrne was too startled to
+make a sound.  Amazed, he stepped back a little--and on the instant the
+seaman flung himself forward headlong as if to clasp his officer round
+the neck.  Instinctively Byrne put out his faltering arms; he felt the
+horrible rigidity of the body and then the coldness of death as their
+heads knocked together and their faces came into contact.  They reeled,
+Byrne hugging Tom close to his breast in order not to let him fall with a
+crash.  He had just strength enough to lower the awful burden gently to
+the floor--then his head swam, his legs gave way, and he sank on his
+knees, leaning over the body with his hands resting on the breast of that
+man once full of generous life, and now as insensible as a stone.
+
+"Dead! my poor Tom, dead," he repeated mentally.  The light of the lamp
+standing near the edge of the table fell from above straight on the stony
+empty stare of these eyes which naturally had a mobile and merry
+expression.
+
+Byrne turned his own away from them.  Tom's black silk neckerchief was
+not knotted on his breast.  It was gone.  The murderers had also taken
+off his shoes and stockings.  And noticing this spoliation, the exposed
+throat, the bare up-turned feet, Byrne felt his eyes run full of tears.
+In other respects the seaman was fully dressed; neither was his clothing
+disarranged as it must have been in a violent struggle.  Only his checked
+shirt had been pulled a little out the waistband in one place, just
+enough to ascertain whether he had a money belt fastened round his body.
+Byrne began to sob into his handkerchief.
+
+It was a nervous outburst which passed off quickly.  Remaining on his
+knees he contemplated sadly the athletic body of as fine a seaman as ever
+had drawn a cutlass, laid a gun, or passed the weather earring in a gale,
+lying stiff and cold, his cheery, fearless spirit departed--perhaps
+turning to him, his boy chum, to his ship out there rolling on the grey
+seas off an iron-bound coast, at the very moment of its flight.
+
+He perceived that the six brass buttons of Tom's jacket had been cut off.
+He shuddered at the notion of the two miserable and repulsive witches
+busying themselves ghoulishly about the defenceless body of his friend.
+Cut off.  Perhaps with the same knife which . . . The head of one
+trembled; the other was bent double, and their eyes were red and bleared,
+their infamous claws unsteady. . . It must have been in this very room
+too, for Tom could not have been killed in the open and brought in here
+afterwards.  Of that Byrne was certain.  Yet those devilish crones could
+not have killed him themselves even by taking him unawares--and Tom would
+be always on his guard of course.  Tom was a very wide awake wary man
+when engaged on any service. . . And in fact how did they murder him?
+Who did?  In what way?
+
+Byrne jumped up, snatched the lamp off the table, and stooped swiftly
+over the body.  The light revealed on the clothing no stain, no trace, no
+spot of blood anywhere.  Byrne's hands began to shake so that he had to
+set the lamp on the floor and turn away his head in order to recover from
+this agitation.
+
+Then he began to explore that cold, still, and rigid body for a stab, a
+gunshot wound, for the trace of some killing blow.  He felt all over the
+skull anxiously.  It was whole.  He slipped his hand under the neck.  It
+was unbroken.  With terrified eyes he peered close under the chin and saw
+no marks of strangulation on the throat.
+
+There were no signs anywhere.  He was just dead.
+
+Impulsively Byrne got away from the body as if the mystery of an
+incomprehensible death had changed his pity into suspicion and dread.
+The lamp on the floor near the set, still face of the seaman showed it
+staring at the ceiling as if despairingly.  In the circle of light Byrne
+saw by the undisturbed patches of thick dust on the floor that there had
+been no struggle in that room.  "He has died outside," he thought.  Yes,
+outside in that narrow corridor, where there was hardly room to turn, the
+mysterious death had come to his poor dear Tom.  The impulse of snatching
+up his pistols and rushing out of the room abandoned Byrne suddenly.  For
+Tom, too, had been armed--with just such powerless weapons as he himself
+possessed--pistols, a cutlass!  And Tom had died a nameless death, by
+incomprehensible means.
+
+A new thought came to Byrne.  That stranger knocking at the door and
+fleeing so swiftly at his appearance had come there to remove the body.
+Aha!  That was the guide the withered witch had promised would show the
+English officer the shortest way of rejoining his man.  A promise, he saw
+it now, of dreadful import.  He who had knocked would have two bodies to
+deal with.  Man and officer would go forth from the house together.  For
+Byrne was certain now that he would have to die before the morning--and
+in the same mysterious manner, leaving behind him an unmarked body.
+
+The sight of a smashed head, of a throat cut, of a gaping gunshot wound,
+would have been an inexpressible relief.  It would have soothed all his
+fears.  His soul cried within him to that dead man whom he had never
+found wanting in danger.  "Why don't you tell me what I am to look for,
+Tom?  Why don't you?"  But in rigid immobility, extended on his back, he
+seemed to preserve an austere silence, as if disdaining in the finality
+of his awful knowledge to hold converse with the living.
+
+Suddenly Byrne flung himself on his knees by the side of the body, and
+dry-eyed, fierce, opened the shirt wide on the breast, as if to tear the
+secret forcibly from that cold heart which had been so loyal to him in
+life!  Nothing!  Nothing!  He raised the lamp, and all the sign
+vouchsafed to him by that face which used to be so kindly in expression
+was a small bruise on the forehead--the least thing, a mere mark.  The
+skin even was not broken.  He stared at it a long time as if lost in a
+dreadful dream.  Then he observed that Tom's hands were clenched as
+though he had fallen facing somebody in a fight with fists.  His
+knuckles, on closer view, appeared somewhat abraded.  Both hands.
+
+The discovery of these slight signs was more appalling to Byrne than the
+absolute absence of every mark would have been.  So Tom had died striking
+against something which could be hit, and yet could kill one without
+leaving a wound--by a breath.
+
+Terror, hot terror, began to play about Byrne's heart like a tongue of
+flame that touches and withdraws before it turns a thing to ashes.  He
+backed away from the body as far as he could, then came forward
+stealthily casting fearful glances to steal another look at the bruised
+forehead.  There would perhaps be such a faint bruise on his own
+forehead--before the morning.
+
+"I can't bear it," he whispered to himself.  Tom was for him now an
+object of horror, a sight at once tempting and revolting to his fear.  He
+couldn't bear to look at him.
+
+At last, desperation getting the better of his increasing horror, he
+stepped forward from the wall against which he had been leaning, seized
+the corpse under the armpits, and began to lug it over to the bed.  The
+bare heels of the seaman trailed on the floor noiselessly.  He was heavy
+with the dead weight of inanimate objects.  With a last effort Byrne
+landed him face downwards on the edge of the bed, rolled him over,
+snatched from under this stiff passive thing a sheet with which he
+covered it over.  Then he spread the curtains at head and foot so that
+joining together as he shook their folds they hid the bed altogether from
+his sight.
+
+He stumbled towards a chair, and fell on it.  The perspiration poured
+from his face for a moment, and then his veins seemed to carry for a
+while a thin stream of half, frozen blood.  Complete terror had
+possession of him now, a nameless terror which had turned his heart to
+ashes.
+
+He sat upright in the straight-backed chair, the lamp burning at his
+feet, his pistols and his hanger at his left elbow on the end of the
+table, his eyes turning incessantly in their sockets round the walls,
+over the ceiling, over the floor, in the expectation of a mysterious and
+appalling vision.  The thing which could deal death in a breath was
+outside that bolted door.  But Byrne believed neither in walls nor bolts
+now.  Unreasoning terror turning everything to account, his old time
+boyish admiration of the athletic Tom, the undaunted Tom (he had seemed
+to him invincible), helped to paralyse his faculties, added to his
+despair.
+
+He was no longer Edgar Byrne.  He was a tortured soul suffering more
+anguish than any sinner's body had ever suffered from rack or boot.  The
+depth of his torment may be measured when I say that this young man, as
+brave at least as the average of his kind, contemplated seizing a pistol
+and firing into his own head.  But a deadly, chilly, langour was
+spreading over his limbs.  It was as if his flesh had been wet plaster
+stiffening slowly about his ribs.  Presently, he thought, the two witches
+will be coming in, with crutch and stick--horrible, grotesque,
+monstrous--affiliated to the devil--to put a mark on his forehead, the
+tiny little bruise of death.  And he wouldn't be able to do anything.
+Tom had struck out at something, but he was not like Tom.  His limbs were
+dead already.  He sat still, dying the death over and over again; and the
+only part of him which moved were his eyes, turning round and round in
+their sockets, running over the walls, the floor, the ceiling, again and
+again till suddenly they became motionless and stony--starting out of his
+head fixed in the direction of the bed.
+
+He had seen the heavy curtains stir and shake as if the dead body they
+concealed had turned over and sat up.  Byrne, who thought the world could
+hold no more terrors in store, felt his hair stir at the roots.  He
+gripped the arms of the chair, his jaw fell, and the sweat broke out on
+his brow while his dry tongue clove suddenly to the roof of his mouth.
+Again the curtains stirred, but did not open.  "Don't, Tom!" Byrne made
+effort to shout, but all he heard was a slight moan such as an uneasy
+sleeper may make.  He felt that his brain was going, for, now, it seemed
+to him that the ceiling over the bed had moved, had slanted, and came
+level again--and once more the closed curtains swayed gently as if about
+to part.
+
+Byrne closed his eyes not to see the awful apparition of the seaman's
+corpse coming out animated by an evil spirit.  In the profound silence of
+the room he endured a moment of frightful agony, then opened his eyes
+again.  And he saw at once that the curtains remained closed still, but
+that the ceiling over the bed had risen quite a foot.  With the last
+gleam of reason left to him he understood that it was the enormous
+baldaquin over the bed which was coming down, while the curtains attached
+to it swayed softly, sinking gradually to the floor.  His drooping jaw
+snapped to--and half rising in his chair he watched mutely the noiseless
+descent of the monstrous canopy.  It came down in short smooth rushes
+till lowered half way or more, when it took a run and settled swiftly its
+turtle-back shape with the deep border piece fitting exactly the edge of
+the bedstead.  A slight crack or two of wood were heard, and the
+overpowering stillness of the room resumed its sway.
+
+Byrne stood up, gasped for breath, and let out a cry of rage and dismay,
+the first sound which he is perfectly certain did make its way past his
+lips on this night of terrors.  This then was the death he had escaped!
+This was the devilish artifice of murder poor Tom's soul had perhaps
+tried from beyond the border to warn him of.  For this was how he had
+died.  Byrne was certain he had heard the voice of the seaman, faintly
+distinct in his familiar phrase, "Mr. Byrne!  Look out, sir!" and again
+uttering words he could not make out.  But then the distance separating
+the living from the dead is so great!  Poor Tom had tried.  Byrne ran to
+the bed and attempted to lift up, to push off the horrible lid smothering
+the body.  It resisted his efforts, heavy as lead, immovable like a
+tombstone.  The rage of vengeance made him desist; his head buzzed with
+chaotic thoughts of extermination, he turned round the room as if he
+could find neither his weapons nor the way out; and all the time he
+stammered awful menaces. . .
+
+A violent battering at the door of the inn recalled him to his soberer
+senses.  He flew to the window pulled the shutters open, and looked out.
+In the faint dawn he saw below him a mob of men.  Ha!  He would go and
+face at once this murderous lot collected no doubt for his undoing.
+After his struggle with nameless terrors he yearned for an open fray with
+armed enemies.  But he must have remained yet bereft of his reason,
+because forgetting his weapons he rushed downstairs with a wild cry,
+unbarred the door while blows were raining on it outside, and flinging it
+open flew with his bare hands at the throat of the first man he saw
+before him.  They rolled over together.  Byrne's hazy intention was to
+break through, to fly up the mountain path, and come back presently with
+Gonzales' men to exact an exemplary vengeance.  He fought furiously till
+a tree, a house, a mountain, seemed to crash down upon his head--and he
+knew no more.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Here Mr. Byrne describes in detail the skilful manner in which he found
+his broken head bandaged, informs us that he had lost a great deal of
+blood, and ascribes the preservation of his sanity to that circumstance.
+He sets down Gonzales' profuse apologies in full too.  For it was
+Gonzales who, tired of waiting for news from the English, had come down
+to the inn with half his band, on his way to the sea.  "His excellency,"
+he explained, "rushed out with fierce impetuosity, and, moreover, was not
+known to us for a friend, and so we . . . etc., etc.  When asked what had
+become of the witches, he only pointed his finger silently to the ground,
+then voiced calmly a moral reflection: "The passion for gold is pitiless
+in the very old, senor," he said.  "No doubt in former days they have put
+many a solitary traveller to sleep in the archbishop's bed."
+
+"There was also a gipsy girl there," said Byrne feebly from the
+improvised litter on which he was being carried to the coast by a squad
+of guerilleros.
+
+"It was she who winched up that infernal machine, and it was she too who
+lowered it that night," was the answer.
+
+"But why?  Why?" exclaimed Byrne.  "Why should she wish for my death?"
+
+"No doubt for the sake of your excellency's coat buttons," said politely
+the saturnine Gonzales.  "We found those of the dead mariner concealed on
+her person.  But your excellency may rest assured that everything that is
+fitting has been done on this occasion."
+
+Byrne asked no more questions.  There was still another death which was
+considered by Gonzales as "fitting to the occasion."  The one-eyed
+Bernardino stuck against the wall of his wine-shop received the charge of
+six escopettas into his breast.  As the shots rang out the rough bier
+with Tom's body on it went past carried by a bandit-like gang of Spanish
+patriots down the ravine to the shore, where two boats from the ship were
+waiting for what was left on earth of her best seaman.
+
+Mr. Byrne, very pale and weak, stepped into the boat which carried the
+body of his humble friend.  For it was decided that Tom Corbin should
+rest far out in the bay of Biscay.  The officer took the tiller and,
+turning his head for the last look at the shore, saw on the grey hillside
+something moving, which he made out to be a little man in a yellow hat
+mounted on a mule--that mule without which the fate of Tom Corbin would
+have remained mysterious for ever.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_June_, 1913.
+
+
+
+
+BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+While we were hanging about near the water's edge, as sailors idling
+ashore will do (it was in the open space before the Harbour Office of a
+great Eastern port), a man came towards us from the "front" of business
+houses, aiming obliquely at the landing steps.  He attracted my attention
+because in the movement of figures in white drill suits on the pavement
+from which he stepped, his costume, the usual tunic and trousers, being
+made of light grey flannel, made him noticeable.
+
+I had time to observe him.  He was stout, but he was not grotesque.  His
+face was round and smooth, his complexion very fair.  On his nearer
+approach I saw a little moustache made all the fairer by a good many
+white hairs.  And he had, for a stout man, quite a good chin.  In passing
+us he exchanged nods with the friend I was with and smiled.
+
+My friend was Hollis, the fellow who had so many adventures and had known
+so many queer people in that part of the (more or less) gorgeous East in
+the days of his youth.  He said: "That's a good man.  I don't mean good
+in the sense of smart or skilful in his trade.  I mean a really _good_
+man."
+
+I turned round at once to look at the phenomenon.  The "really _good_
+man" had a very broad back.  I saw him signal a sampan to come alongside,
+get into it, and go off in the direction of a cluster of local steamers
+anchored close inshore.
+
+I said: "He's a seaman, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes.  Commands that biggish dark-green steamer: '_Sissie_--Glasgow.'  He
+has never commanded anything else but the '_Sissie_--Glasgow,' only it
+wasn't always the same _Sissie_.  The first he had was about half the
+length of this one, and we used to tell poor Davidson that she was a size
+too small for him.  Even at that time Davidson had bulk.  We warned him
+he would get callosities on his shoulders and elbows because of the tight
+fit of his command.  And Davidson could well afford the smiles he gave us
+for our chaff.  He made lots of money in her.  She belonged to a portly
+Chinaman resembling a mandarin in a picture-book, with goggles and thin
+drooping moustaches, and as dignified as only a Celestial knows how to
+be.
+
+"The best of Chinamen as employers is that they have such gentlemanly
+instincts.  Once they become convinced that you are a straight man, they
+give you their unbounded confidence.  You simply can't do wrong, then.
+And they are pretty quick judges of character, too.  Davidson's Chinaman
+was the first to find out his worth, on some theoretical principle.  One
+day in his counting-house, before several white men he was heard to
+declare: 'Captain Davidson is a good man.'  And that settled it.  After
+that you couldn't tell if it was Davidson who belonged to the Chinaman or
+the Chinaman who belonged to Davidson.  It was he who, shortly before he
+died, ordered in Glasgow the new _Sissie_ for Davidson to command."
+
+We walked into the shade of the Harbour Office and leaned our elbows on
+the parapet of the quay.
+
+"She was really meant to comfort poor Davidson," continued Hollis.  "Can
+you fancy anything more naively touching than this old mandarin spending
+several thousand pounds to console his white man?  Well, there she is.
+The old mandarin's sons have inherited her, and Davidson with her; and he
+commands her; and what with his salary and trading privileges he makes a
+lot of money; and everything is as before; and Davidson even smiles--you
+have seen it?  Well, the smile's the only thing which isn't as before."
+
+"Tell me, Hollis," I asked, "what do you mean by good in this
+connection?"
+
+"Well, there are men who are born good just as others are born witty.
+What I mean is his nature.  No simpler, more scrupulously delicate soul
+had ever lived in such a--a--comfortable envelope.  How we used to laugh
+at Davidson's fine scruples!  In short, he's thoroughly humane, and I
+don't imagine there can be much of any other sort of goodness that counts
+on this earth.  And as he's that with a shade of particular refinement, I
+may well call him a '_really_ good man.'"
+
+I knew from old that Hollis was a firm believer in the final value of
+shades.  And I said: "I see"--because I really did see Hollis's Davidson
+in the sympathetic stout man who had passed us a little while before.
+But I remembered that at the very moment he smiled his placid face
+appeared veiled in melancholy--a sort of spiritual shadow.  I went on.
+
+"Who on earth has paid him off for being so fine by spoiling his smile?"
+
+"That's quite a story, and I will tell it to you if you like.  Confound
+it!  It's quite a surprising one, too.  Surprising in every way, but
+mostly in the way it knocked over poor Davidson--and apparently only
+because he is such a good sort.  He was telling me all about it only a
+few days ago.  He said that when he saw these four fellows with their
+heads in a bunch over the table, he at once didn't like it.  He didn't
+like it at all.  You mustn't suppose that Davidson is a soft fool.  These
+men--
+
+"But I had better begin at the beginning.  We must go back to the first
+time the old dollars had been called in by our Government in exchange for
+a new issue.  Just about the time when I left these parts to go home for
+a long stay.  Every trader in the islands was thinking of getting his old
+dollars sent up here in time, and the demand for empty French wine
+cases--you know the dozen of vermouth or claret size--was something
+unprecedented.  The custom was to pack the dollars in little bags of a
+hundred each.  I don't know how many bags each case would hold.  A good
+lot.  Pretty tidy sums must have been moving afloat just then.  But let
+us get away from here.  Won't do to stay in the sun.  Where could we--?
+I know! let us go to those tiffin-rooms over there."
+
+We moved over accordingly.  Our appearance in the long empty room at that
+early hour caused visible consternation amongst the China boys.  But
+Hollis led the way to one of the tables between the windows screened by
+rattan blinds.  A brilliant half-light trembled on the ceiling, on the
+whitewashed walls, bathed the multitude of vacant chairs and tables in a
+peculiar, stealthy glow.
+
+"All right.  We will get something to eat when it's ready," he said,
+waving the anxious Chinaman waiter aside.  He took his temples touched
+with grey between his hands, leaning over the table to bring his face,
+his dark, keen eyes, closer to mine.
+
+"Davidson then was commanding the steamer _Sissie_--the little one which
+we used to chaff him about.  He ran her alone, with only the Malay serang
+for a deck officer.  The nearest approach to another white man on board
+of her was the engineer, a Portuguese half-caste, as thin as a lath and
+quite a youngster at that.  For all practical purposes Davidson was
+managing that command of his single-handed; and of course this was known
+in the port.  I am telling you of it because the fact had its influence
+on the developments you shall hear of presently.
+
+"His steamer, being so small, could go up tiny creeks and into shallow
+bays and through reefs and over sand-banks, collecting produce, where no
+other vessel but a native craft would think of venturing.  It is a paying
+game, often.  Davidson was known to visit in her places that no one else
+could find and that hardly anybody had ever heard of.
+
+"The old dollars being called in, Davidson's Chinaman thought that the
+_Sissie_ would be just the thing to collect them from small traders in
+the less frequented parts of the Archipelago.  It's a good business.
+Such cases of dollars are dumped aft in the ship's lazarette, and you get
+good freight for very little trouble and space.
+
+"Davidson, too, thought it was a good idea; and together they made up a
+list of his calls on his next trip.  Then Davidson (he had naturally the
+chart of his voyages in his head) remarked that on his way back he might
+look in at a certain settlement up a mere creek, where a poor sort of
+white man lived in a native village.  Davidson pointed out to his
+Chinaman that the fellow was certain to have some rattans to ship.
+
+"'Probably enough to fill her forward,' said Davidson.  'And that'll be
+better than bringing her back with empty holds.  A day more or less
+doesn't matter.'
+
+"This was sound talk, and the Chinaman owner could not but agree.  But if
+it hadn't been sound it would have been just the same.  Davidson did what
+he liked.  He was a man that could do no wrong.  However, this suggestion
+of his was not merely a business matter.  There was in it a touch of
+Davidsonian kindness.  For you must know that the man could not have
+continued to live quietly up that creek if it had not been for Davidson's
+willingness to call there from time to time.  And Davidson's Chinaman
+knew this perfectly well, too.  So he only smiled his dignified, bland
+smile, and said: 'All right, Captain.  You do what you like.'
+
+"I will explain presently how this connection between Davidson and that
+fellow came about.  Now I want to tell you about the part of this affair
+which happened here--the preliminaries of it.
+
+"You know as well as I do that these tiffin-rooms where we are sitting
+now have been in existence for many years.  Well, next day about twelve
+o'clock, Davidson dropped in here to get something to eat.
+
+"And here comes the only moment in this story where accident--mere
+accident--plays a part.  If Davidson had gone home that day for tiffin,
+there would be now, after twelve years or more, nothing changed in his
+kindly, placid smile.
+
+"But he came in here; and perhaps it was sitting at this very table that
+he remarked to a friend of mine that his next trip was to be a
+dollar-collecting trip.  He added, laughing, that his wife was making
+rather a fuss about it.  She had begged him to stay ashore and get
+somebody else to take his place for a voyage.  She thought there was some
+danger on account of the dollars.  He told her, he said, that there were
+no Java-sea pirates nowadays except in boys' books.  He had laughed at
+her fears, but he was very sorry, too; for when she took any notion in
+her head it was impossible to argue her out of it.  She would be worrying
+herself all the time he was away.  Well, he couldn't help it.  There was
+no one ashore fit to take his place for the trip.
+
+"This friend of mine and I went home together in the same mail-boat, and
+he mentioned that conversation one evening in the Red Sea while we were
+talking over the things and people we had just left, with more or less
+regret.
+
+"I can't say that Davidson occupied a very prominent place.  Moral
+excellence seldom does.  He was quietly appreciated by those who knew him
+well; but his more obvious distinction consisted in this, that he was
+married.  Ours, as you remember, was a bachelor crowd; in spirit anyhow,
+if not absolutely in fact.  There might have been a few wives in
+existence, but if so they were invisible, distant, never alluded to.  For
+what would have been the good?  Davidson alone was visibly married.
+
+"Being married suited him exactly.  It fitted him so well that the
+wildest of us did not resent the fact when it was disclosed.  Directly he
+had felt his feet out here, Davidson sent for his wife.  She came out
+(from West Australia) in the _Somerset_, under the care of Captain
+Ritchie--you know, Monkey-face Ritchie--who couldn't praise enough her
+sweetness, her gentleness, and her charm.  She seemed to be the
+heaven-born mate for Davidson.  She found on arrival a very pretty
+bungalow on the hill, ready for her and the little girl they had.  Very
+soon he got for her a two-wheeled trap and a Burmah pony, and she used to
+drive down of an evening to pick up Davidson, on the quay.  When
+Davidson, beaming, got into the trap, it would become very full all at
+once.
+
+"We used to admire Mrs. Davidson from a distance.  It was a girlish head
+out of a keepsake.  From a distance.  We had not many opportunities for a
+closer view, because she did not care to give them to us.  We would have
+been glad to drop in at the Davidson bungalow, but we were made to feel
+somehow that we were not very welcome there.  Not that she ever said
+anything ungracious.  She never had much to say for herself.  I was
+perhaps the one who saw most of the Davidsons at home.  What I noticed
+under the superficial aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate
+forehead, and her small, red, pretty, ungenerous mouth.  But then I am an
+observer with strong prejudices.  Most of us were fetched by her white,
+swan-like neck, by that drooping, innocent profile.  There was a lot of
+latent devotion to Davidson's wife hereabouts, at that time, I can tell
+you.  But my idea was that she repaid it by a profound suspicion of the
+sort of men we were; a mistrust which extended--I fancied--to her very
+husband at times.  And I thought then she was jealous of him in a way;
+though there were no women that she could be jealous about.  She had no
+women's society.  It's difficult for a shipmaster's wife unless there are
+other shipmasters' wives about, and there were none here then.  I know
+that the dock manager's wife called on her; but that was all.  The
+fellows here formed the opinion that Mrs. Davidson was a meek, shy little
+thing.  She looked it, I must say.  And this opinion was so universal
+that the friend I have been telling you of remembered his conversation
+with Davidson simply because of the statement about Davidson's wife.  He
+even wondered to me: 'Fancy Mrs. Davidson making a fuss to that extent.
+She didn't seem to me the sort of woman that would know how to make a
+fuss about anything.'
+
+"I wondered, too--but not so much.  That bumpy forehead--eh?  I had
+always suspected her of being silly.  And I observed that Davidson must
+have been vexed by this display of wifely anxiety.
+
+"My friend said: 'No.  He seemed rather touched and distressed.  There
+really was no one he could ask to relieve him; mainly because he intended
+to make a call in some God-forsaken creek, to look up a fellow of the
+name of Bamtz who apparently had settled there.'
+
+"And again my friend wondered.  'Tell me,' he cried, 'what connection can
+there be between Davidson and such a creature as Bamtz?'
+
+"I don't remember now what answer I made.  A sufficient one could have
+been given in two words: 'Davidson's goodness.'  _That_ never boggled at
+unworthiness if there was the slightest reason for compassion.  I don't
+want you to think that Davidson had no discrimination at all.  Bamtz
+could not have imposed on him.  Moreover, everybody knew what Bamtz was.
+He was a loafer with a beard.  When I think of Bamtz, the first thing I
+see is that long black beard and a lot of propitiatory wrinkles at the
+corners of two little eyes.  There was no such beard from here to
+Polynesia, where a beard is a valuable property in itself.  Bamtz's beard
+was valuable to him in another way.  You know how impressed Orientals are
+by a fine beard.  Years and years ago, I remember, the grave Abdullah,
+the great trader of Sambir, unable to repress signs of astonishment and
+admiration at the first sight of that imposing beard.  And it's very well
+known that Bamtz lived on Abdullah off and on for several years.  It was
+a unique beard, and so was the bearer of the same.  A unique loafer.  He
+made a fine art of it, or rather a sort of craft and mystery.  One can
+understand a fellow living by cadging and small swindles in towns, in
+large communities of people; but Bamtz managed to do that trick in the
+wilderness, to loaf on the outskirts of the virgin forest.
+
+"He understood how to ingratiate himself with the natives.  He would
+arrive in some settlement up a river, make a present of a cheap carbine
+or a pair of shoddy binoculars, or something of that sort, to the Rajah,
+or the head-man, or the principal trader; and on the strength of that
+gift, ask for a house, posing mysteriously as a very special trader.  He
+would spin them no end of yarns, live on the fat of the land, for a
+while, and then do some mean swindle or other--or else they would get
+tired of him and ask him to quit.  And he would go off meekly with an air
+of injured innocence.  Funny life.  Yet, he never got hurt somehow.  I've
+heard of the Rajah of Dongala giving him fifty dollars' worth of trade
+goods and paying his passage in a prau only to get rid of him.  Fact.
+And observe that nothing prevented the old fellow having Bamtz's throat
+cut and the carcase thrown into deep water outside the reefs; for who on
+earth would have inquired after Bamtz?
+
+"He had been known to loaf up and down the wilderness as far north as the
+Gulf of Tonkin.  Neither did he disdain a spell of civilisation from time
+to time.  And it was while loafing and cadging in Saigon, bearded and
+dignified (he gave himself out there as a bookkeeper), that he came
+across Laughing Anne.
+
+"The less said of her early history the better, but something must be
+said.  We may safely suppose there was very little heart left in her
+famous laugh when Bamtz spoke first to her in some low cafe.  She was
+stranded in Saigon with precious little money and in great trouble about
+a kid she had, a boy of five or six.
+
+"A fellow I just remember, whom they called Pearler Harry, brought her
+out first into these parts--from Australia, I believe.  He brought her
+out and then dropped her, and she remained knocking about here and there,
+known to most of us by sight, at any rate.  Everybody in the Archipelago
+had heard of Laughing Anne.  She had really a pleasant silvery laugh
+always at her disposal, so to speak, but it wasn't enough apparently to
+make her fortune.  The poor creature was ready to stick to any
+half-decent man if he would only let her, but she always got dropped, as
+it might have been expected.
+
+"She had been left in Saigon by the skipper of a German ship with whom
+she had been going up and down the China coast as far as Vladivostok for
+near upon two years.  The German said to her: 'This is all over, _mein
+Taubchen_.  I am going home now to get married to the girl I got engaged
+to before coming out here.'  And Anne said: 'All right, I'm ready to go.
+We part friends, don't we?'
+
+"She was always anxious to part friends.  The German told her that of
+course they were parting friends.  He looked rather glum at the moment of
+parting.  She laughed and went ashore.
+
+"But it was no laughing matter for her.  She had some notion that this
+would be her last chance.  What frightened her most was the future of her
+child.  She had left her boy in Saigon before going off with the German,
+in the care of an elderly French couple.  The husband was a doorkeeper in
+some Government office, but his time was up, and they were returning to
+France.  She had to take the boy back from them; and after she had got
+him back, she did not like to part with him any more.
+
+"That was the situation when she and Bamtz got acquainted casually.  She
+could not have had any illusions about that fellow.  To pick up with
+Bamtz was coming down pretty low in the world, even from a material point
+of view.  She had always been decent, in her way; whereas Bamtz was, not
+to mince words, an abject sort of creature.  On the other hand, that
+bearded loafer, who looked much more like a pirate than a bookkeeper, was
+not a brute.  He was gentle--rather--even in his cups.  And then,
+despair, like misfortune, makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows.
+For she may well have despaired.  She was no longer young--you know.
+
+"On the man's side this conjunction is more difficult to explain,
+perhaps.  One thing, however, must be said of Bamtz; he had always kept
+clear of native women.  As one can't suspect him of moral delicacy, I
+surmise that it must have been from prudence.  And he, too, was no longer
+young.  There were many white hairs in his valuable black beard by then.
+He may have simply longed for some kind of companionship in his queer,
+degraded existence.  Whatever their motives, they vanished from Saigon
+together.  And of course nobody cared what had become of them.
+
+"Six months later Davidson came into the Mirrah Settlement.  It was the
+very first time he had been up that creek, where no European vessel had
+ever been seen before.  A Javanese passenger he had on board offered him
+fifty dollars to call in there--it must have been some very particular
+business--and Davidson consented to try.  Fifty dollars, he told me, were
+neither here nor there; but he was curious to see the place, and the
+little _Sissie_ could go anywhere where there was water enough to float a
+soup-plate.
+
+"Davidson landed his Javanese plutocrat, and, as he had to wait a couple
+of hours for the tide, he went ashore himself to stretch his legs.
+
+"It was a small settlement.  Some sixty houses, most of them built on
+piles over the river, the rest scattered in the long grass; the usual
+pathway at the back; the forest hemming in the clearing and smothering
+what there might have been of air into a dead, hot stagnation.
+
+"All the population was on the river-bank staring silently, as Malays
+will do, at the _Sissie_ anchored in the stream.  She was almost as
+wonderful to them as an angel's visit.  Many of the old people had only
+heard vaguely of fire-ships, and not many of the younger generation had
+seen one.  On the back path Davidson strolled in perfect solitude.  But
+he became aware of a bad smell and concluded he would go no farther.
+
+"While he stood wiping his forehead, he heard from somewhere the
+exclamation: 'My God!  It's Davy!'
+
+"Davidson's lower jaw, as he expressed it, came unhooked at the crying of
+this excited voice.  Davy was the name used by the associates of his
+young days; he hadn't heard it for many years.  He stared about with his
+mouth open and saw a white woman issue from the long grass in which a
+small hut stood buried nearly up to the roof.
+
+"Try to imagine the shock: in that wild place that you couldn't find on a
+map, and more squalid than the most poverty-stricken Malay settlement had
+a right to be, this European woman coming swishing out of the long grass
+in a fanciful tea-gown thing, dingy pink satin, with a long train and
+frayed lace trimmings; her eyes like black coals in a pasty-white face.
+Davidson thought that he was asleep, that he was delirious.  From the
+offensive village mudhole (it was what Davidson had sniffed just before)
+a couple of filthy buffaloes uprose with loud snorts and lumbered off
+crashing through the bushes, panic-struck by this apparition.
+
+"The woman came forward, her arms extended, and laid her hands on
+Davidson's shoulders, exclaiming: 'Why!  You have hardly changed at all.
+The same good Davy.'  And she laughed a little wildly.
+
+"This sound was to Davidson like a galvanic shock to a corpse.  He
+started in every muscle.  'Laughing Anne,' he said in an awe-struck
+voice.
+
+"'All that's left of her, Davy.  All that's left of her.'
+
+"Davidson looked up at the sky; but there was to be seen no balloon from
+which she could have fallen on that spot.  When he brought his distracted
+gaze down, it rested on a child holding on with a brown little paw to the
+pink satin gown.  He had run out of the grass after her.  Had Davidson
+seen a real hobgoblin his eyes could not have bulged more than at this
+small boy in a dirty white blouse and ragged knickers.  He had a round
+head of tight chestnut curls, very sunburnt legs, a freckled face, and
+merry eyes.  Admonished by his mother to greet the gentleman, he finished
+off Davidson by addressing him in French.
+
+"'_Bonjour_.'
+
+"Davidson, overcome, looked up at the woman in silence.  She sent the
+child back to the hut, and when he had disappeared in the grass, she
+turned to Davidson, tried to speak, but after getting out the words,
+'That's my Tony,' burst into a long fit of crying.  She had to lean on
+Davidson's shoulder.  He, distressed in the goodness of his heart, stood
+rooted to the spot where she had come upon him.
+
+"What a meeting--eh?  Bamtz had sent her out to see what white man it was
+who had landed.  And she had recognised him from that time when Davidson,
+who had been pearling himself in his youth, had been associating with
+Harry the Pearler and others, the quietest of a rather rowdy set.
+
+"Before Davidson retraced his steps to go on board the steamer, he had
+heard much of Laughing Anne's story, and had even had an interview, on
+the path, with Bamtz himself.  She ran back to the hut to fetch him, and
+he came out lounging, with his hands in his pockets, with the detached,
+casual manner under which he concealed his propensity to cringe.
+Ya-a-as-as.  He thought he would settle here permanently--with her.  This
+with a nod at Laughing Anne, who stood by, a haggard, tragically anxious
+figure, her black hair hanging over her shoulders.
+
+"'No more paint and dyes for me, Davy,' she struck in, 'if only you will
+do what he wants you to do.  You know that I was always ready to stand by
+my men--if they had only let me.'
+
+"Davidson had no doubt of her earnestness.  It was of Bamtz's good faith
+that he was not at all sure.  Bamtz wanted Davidson to promise to call at
+Mirrah more or less regularly.  He thought he saw an opening to do
+business with rattans there, if only he could depend on some craft to
+bring out trading goods and take away his produce.
+
+"'I have a few dollars to make a start on.  The people are all right.'
+
+"He had come there, where he was not known, in a native prau, and had
+managed, with his sedate manner and the exactly right kind of yarn he
+knew how to tell to the natives, to ingratiate himself with the chief
+man.
+
+"'The Orang Kaya has given me that empty house there to live in as long
+as I will stay,' added Bamtz.
+
+"'Do it, Davy,' cried the woman suddenly.  'Think of that poor kid.'
+
+"'Seen him?  'Cute little customer,' said the reformed loafer in such a
+tone of interest as to surprise Davidson into a kindly glance.
+
+"'I certainly can do it,' he declared.  He thought of at first making
+some stipulation as to Bamtz behaving decently to the woman, but his
+exaggerated delicacy and also the conviction that such a fellow's
+promises were worth nothing restrained him.  Anne went a little distance
+down the path with him talking anxiously.
+
+"'It's for the kid.  How could I have kept him with me if I had to knock
+about in towns?  Here he will never know that his mother was a painted
+woman.  And this Bamtz likes him.  He's real fond of him.  I suppose I
+ought to thank God for that.'
+
+"Davidson shuddered at any human creature being brought so low as to have
+to thank God for the favours or affection of a Bamtz.
+
+"'And do you think that you can make out to live here?' he asked gently.
+
+"'Can't I?  You know I have always stuck to men through thick and thin
+till they had enough of me.  And now look at me!  But inside I am as I
+always was.  I have acted on the square to them all one after another.
+Only they do get tired somehow.  Oh, Davy!  Harry ought not to have cast
+me off.  It was he that led me astray.'
+
+"Davidson mentioned to her that Harry the Pearler had been dead now for
+some years.  Perhaps she had heard?
+
+"She made a sign that she had heard; and walked by the side of Davidson
+in silence nearly to the bank.  Then she told him that her meeting with
+him had brought back the old times to her mind.  She had not cried for
+years.  She was not a crying woman either.  It was hearing herself called
+Laughing Anne that had started her sobbing like a fool.  Harry was the
+only man she had loved.  The others--
+
+"She shrugged her shoulders.  But she prided herself on her loyalty to
+the successive partners of her dismal adventures.  She had never played
+any tricks in her life.  She was a pal worth having.  But men did get
+tired.  They did not understand women.  She supposed it had to be.
+
+"Davidson was attempting a veiled warning as to Bamtz, but she
+interrupted him.  She knew what men were.  She knew what this man was
+like.  But he had taken wonderfully to the kid.  And Davidson desisted
+willingly, saying to himself that surely poor Laughing Anne could have no
+illusions by this time.  She wrung his hand hard at parting.
+
+"'It's for the kid, Davy--it's for the kid.  Isn't he a bright little
+chap?'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+"All this happened about two years before the day when Davidson, sitting
+in this very room, talked to my friend.  You will see presently how this
+room can get full.  Every seat'll be occupied, and as you notice, the
+tables are set close, so that the backs of the chairs are almost
+touching.  There is also a good deal of noisy talk here about one
+o'clock.
+
+"I don't suppose Davidson was talking very loudly; but very likely he had
+to raise his voice across the table to my friend.  And here accident,
+mere accident, put in its work by providing a pair of fine ears close
+behind Davidson's chair.  It was ten to one against, the owner of the
+same having enough change in his pockets to get his tiffin here.  But he
+had.  Most likely had rooked somebody of a few dollars at cards
+overnight.  He was a bright creature of the name of Fector, a spare,
+short, jumpy fellow with a red face and muddy eyes.  He described himself
+as a journalist, as certain kind of women give themselves out as
+actresses in the dock of a police-court.
+
+"He used to introduce himself to strangers as a man with a mission to
+track out abuses and fight them whenever found.  He would also hint that
+he was a martyr.  And it's a fact that he had been kicked, horsewhipped,
+imprisoned, and hounded with ignominy out of pretty well every place
+between Ceylon and Shanghai, for a professional blackmailer.
+
+"I suppose, in that trade, you've got to have active wits and sharp ears.
+It's not likely that he overheard every word Davidson said about his
+dollar collecting trip, but he heard enough to set his wits at work.
+
+"He let Davidson go out, and then hastened away down to the native slums
+to a sort of lodging-house kept in partnership by the usual sort of
+Portuguese and a very disreputable Chinaman.  Macao Hotel, it was called,
+but it was mostly a gambling den that one used to warn fellows against.
+Perhaps you remember?
+
+"There, the evening before, Fector had met a precious couple, a
+partnership even more queer than the Portuguese and the Chinaman.  One of
+the two was Niclaus--you know.  Why! the fellow with a Tartar moustache
+and a yellow complexion, like a Mongolian, only that his eyes were set
+straight and his face was not so flat.  One couldn't tell what breed he
+was.  A nondescript beggar.  From a certain angle you would think a very
+bilious white man.  And I daresay he was.  He owned a Malay prau and
+called himself The Nakhoda, as one would say: The Captain.  Aha!  Now you
+remember.  He couldn't, apparently, speak any other European language
+than English, but he flew the Dutch flag on his prau.
+
+"The other was the Frenchman without hands.  Yes.  The very same we used
+to know in '79 in Sydney, keeping a little tobacco shop at the lower end
+of George Street.  You remember the huge carcase hunched up behind the
+counter, the big white face and the long black hair brushed back off a
+high forehead like a bard's.  He was always trying to roll cigarettes on
+his knee with his stumps, telling endless yarns of Polynesia and whining
+and cursing in turn about '_mon malheur_.'  His hands had been blown away
+by a dynamite cartridge while fishing in some lagoon.  This accident, I
+believe, had made him more wicked than before, which is saying a good
+deal.
+
+"He was always talking about 'resuming his activities' some day, whatever
+they were, if he could only get an intelligent companion.  It was evident
+that the little shop was no field for his activities, and the sickly
+woman with her face tied up, who used to look in sometimes through the
+back door, was no companion for him.
+
+"And, true enough, he vanished from Sydney before long, after some
+trouble with the Excise fellows about his stock.  Goods stolen out of a
+warehouse or something similar.  He left the woman behind, but he must
+have secured some sort of companion--he could not have shifted for
+himself; but whom he went away with, and where, and what other companions
+he might have picked up afterwards, it is impossible to make the remotest
+guess about.
+
+"Why exactly he came this way I can't tell.  Towards the end of my time
+here we began to hear talk of a maimed Frenchman who had been seen here
+and there.  But no one knew then that he had foregathered with Niclaus
+and lived in his prau.  I daresay he put Niclaus up to a thing or two.
+Anyhow, it was a partnership.  Niclaus was somewhat afraid of the
+Frenchman on account of his tempers, which were awful.  He looked then
+like a devil; but a man without hands, unable to load or handle a weapon,
+can at best go for one only with his teeth.  From that danger Niclaus
+felt certain he could always defend himself.
+
+"The couple were alone together loafing in the common-room of that
+infamous hotel when Fector turned up.  After some beating about the bush,
+for he was doubtful how far he could trust these two, he repeated what he
+had overheard in the tiffin-rooms.
+
+"His tale did not have much success till he came to mention the creek and
+Bamtz's name.  Niclaus, sailing about like a native in a prau, was, in
+his own words, 'familiar with the locality.'  The huge Frenchman, walking
+up and down the room with his stumps in the pockets of his jacket,
+stopped short in surprise.  '_Comment_?  _Bamtz_!  _Bamtz_!'
+
+"He had run across him several times in his life.  He exclaimed:
+'_Bamtz_!  _Mais je ne connais que ca_!'  And he applied such a
+contemptuously indecent epithet to Bamtz that when, later, he alluded to
+him as '_une chiffe_' (a mere rag) it sounded quite complimentary.  'We
+can do with him what we like,' he asserted confidently.  'Oh, yes.
+Certainly we must hasten to pay a visit to that--' (another awful
+descriptive epithet quite unfit for repetition).  'Devil take me if we
+don't pull off a coup that will set us all up for a long time.'
+
+"He saw all that lot of dollars melted into bars and disposed of
+somewhere on the China coast.  Of the escape after the _coup_ he never
+doubted.  There was Niclaus's prau to manage that in.
+
+"In his enthusiasm he pulled his stumps out of his pockets and waved them
+about.  Then, catching sight of them, as it were, he held them in front
+of his eyes, cursing and blaspheming and bewailing his misfortune and his
+helplessness, till Niclaus quieted him down.
+
+"But it was his mind that planned out the affair and it was his spirit
+which carried the other two on.  Neither of them was of the bold
+buccaneer type; and Fector, especially, had never in his adventurous life
+used other weapons than slander and lies.
+
+"That very evening they departed on a visit to Bamtz in Niclaus's prau,
+which had been lying, emptied of her cargo of cocoanuts, for a day or two
+under the canal bridge.  They must have crossed the bows of the anchored
+_Sissie_, and no doubt looked at her with interest as the scene of their
+future exploit, the great haul, _le grand coup_!
+
+"Davidson's wife, to his great surprise, sulked with him for several days
+before he left.  I don't know whether it occurred to him that, for all
+her angelic profile, she was a very stupidly obstinate girl.  She didn't
+like the tropics.  He had brought her out there, where she had no
+friends, and now, she said, he was becoming inconsiderate.  She had a
+presentiment of some misfortune, and notwithstanding Davidson's
+painstaking explanations, she could not see why her presentiments were to
+be disregarded.  On the very last evening before Davidson went away she
+asked him in a suspicious manner:
+
+"'Why is it that you are so anxious to go this time?'
+
+"'I am not anxious,' protested the good Davidson.  'I simply can't help
+myself.  There's no one else to go in my place.'
+
+"'Oh!  There's no one,' she said, turning away slowly.
+
+"She was so distant with him that evening that Davidson from a sense of
+delicacy made up his mind to say good-bye to her at once and go and sleep
+on board.  He felt very miserable and, strangely enough, more on his own
+account than on account of his wife.  She seemed to him much more
+offended than grieved.
+
+"Three weeks later, having collected a good many cases of old dollars
+(they were stowed aft in the lazarette with an iron bar and a padlock
+securing the hatch under his cabin-table), yes, with a bigger lot than he
+had expected to collect, he found himself homeward bound and off the
+entrance of the creek where Bamtz lived and even, in a sense, flourished.
+
+"It was so late in the day that Davidson actually hesitated whether he
+should not pass by this time.  He had no regard for Bamtz, who was a
+degraded but not a really unhappy man.  His pity for Laughing Anne was no
+more than her case deserved.  But his goodness was of a particularly
+delicate sort.  He realised how these people were dependent on him, and
+how they would feel their dependence (if he failed to turn up) through a
+long month of anxious waiting.  Prompted by his sensitive humanity,
+Davidson, in the gathering dusk, turned the _Sissie's_ head towards the
+hardly discernible coast, and navigated her safety through a maze of
+shallow patches.  But by the time he got to the mouth of the creek the
+night had come.
+
+"The narrow waterway lay like a black cutting through the forest.  And as
+there were always grounded snaggs in the channel which it would be
+impossible to make out, Davidson very prudently turned the _Sissie_
+round, and with only enough steam on the boilers to give her a touch
+ahead if necessary, let her drift up stern first with the tide, silent
+and invisible in the impenetrable darkness and in the dumb stillness.
+
+"It was a long job, and when at the end of two hours Davidson thought he
+must be up to the clearing, the settlement slept already, the whole land
+of forests and rivers was asleep.
+
+"Davidson, seeing a solitary light in the massed darkness of the shore,
+knew that it was burning in Bamtz's house.  This was unexpected at this
+time of the night, but convenient as a guide.  By a turn of the screw and
+a touch of the helm he sheered the _Sissie_ alongside Bamtz's wharf--a
+miserable structure of a dozen piles and a few planks, of which the
+ex-vagabond was very proud.  A couple of Kalashes jumped down on it, took
+a turn with the ropes thrown to them round the posts, and the _Sissie_
+came to rest without a single loud word or the slightest noise.  And just
+in time too, for the tide turned even before she was properly moored.
+
+"Davidson had something to eat, and then, coming on deck for a last look
+round, noticed that the light was still burning in the house.
+
+"This was very unusual, but since they were awake so late, Davidson
+thought that he would go up to say that he was in a hurry to be off and
+to ask that what rattans there were in store should be sent on board with
+the first sign of dawn.
+
+"He stepped carefully over the shaky planks, not being anxious to get a
+sprained ankle, and picked his way across the waste ground to the foot of
+the house ladder.  The house was but a glorified hut on piles, unfenced
+and lonely.
+
+"Like many a stout man, Davidson is very lightfooted.  He climbed the
+seven steps or so, stepped across the bamboo platform quietly, but what
+he saw through the doorway stopped him short.
+
+"Four men were sitting by the light of a solitary candle.  There was a
+bottle, a jug and glasses on the table, but they were not engaged in
+drinking.  Two packs of cards were lying there too, but they were not
+preparing to play.  They were talking together in whispers, and remained
+quite unaware of him.  He himself was too astonished to make a sound for
+some time.  The world was still, except for the sibilation of the
+whispering heads bunched together over the table.
+
+"And Davidson, as I have quoted him to you before, didn't like it.  He
+didn't like it at all.
+
+"The situation ended with a scream proceeding from the dark, interior
+part of the room.  'O Davy! you've given me a turn.'
+
+"Davidson made out beyond the table Anne's very pale face.  She laughed a
+little hysterically, out of the deep shadows between the gloomy mat
+walls.  'Ha! ha! ha!'
+
+"The four heads sprang apart at the first sound, and four pairs of eyes
+became fixed stonily on Davidson.  The woman came forward, having little
+more on her than a loose chintz wrapper and straw slippers on her bare
+feet.  Her head was tied up Malay fashion in a red handkerchief, with a
+mass of loose hair hanging under it behind.  Her professional, gay,
+European feathers had literally dropped off her in the course of these
+two years, but a long necklace of amber beads hung round her uncovered
+neck.  It was the only ornament she had left; Bamtz had sold all her
+poor-enough trinkets during the flight from Saigon--when their
+association began.
+
+"She came forward, past the table, into the light, with her usual groping
+gesture of extended arms, as though her soul, poor thing! had gone blind
+long ago, her white cheeks hollow, her eyes darkly wild, distracted, as
+Davidson thought.  She came on swiftly, grabbed him by the arm, dragged
+him in.  'It's heaven itself that sends you to-night.  My Tony's so
+bad--come and see him.  Come along--do!'
+
+"Davidson submitted.  The only one of the men to move was Bamtz, who made
+as if to get up but dropped back in his chair again.  Davidson in passing
+heard him mutter confusedly something that sounded like 'poor little
+beggar.'
+
+"The child, lying very flushed in a miserable cot knocked up out of
+gin-cases, stared at Davidson with wide, drowsy eyes.  It was a bad bout
+of fever clearly.  But while Davidson was promising to go on board and
+fetch some medicines, and generally trying to say reassuring things, he
+could not help being struck by the extraordinary manner of the woman
+standing by his side.  Gazing with despairing expression down at the cot,
+she would suddenly throw a quick, startled glance at Davidson and then
+towards the other room.
+
+"'Yes, my poor girl,' he whispered, interpreting her distraction in his
+own way, though he had nothing precise in his mind.  'I'm afraid this
+bodes no good to you.  How is it they are here?'
+
+"She seized his forearm and breathed out forcibly: 'No good to me!  Oh,
+no!  But what about you!  They are after the dollars you have on board.'
+
+"Davidson let out an astonished 'How do they know there are any dollars?'
+
+"She clapped her hands lightly, in distress.  'So it's true!  You have
+them on board?  Then look out for yourself.'
+
+"They stood gazing down at the boy in the cot, aware that they might be
+observed from the other room.
+
+"'We must get him to perspire as soon as possible,' said Davidson in his
+ordinary voice.  'You'll have to give him hot drink of some kind.  I will
+go on board and bring you a spirit-kettle amongst other things.'  And he
+added under his breath: 'Do they actually mean murder?'
+
+"She made no sign, she had returned to her desolate contemplation of the
+boy.  Davidson thought she had not heard him even, when with an unchanged
+expression she spoke under her breath.
+
+"'The Frenchman would, in a minute.  The others shirk it--unless you
+resist.  He's a devil.  He keeps them going.  Without him they would have
+done nothing but talk.  I've got chummy with him. What can you do when
+you are with a man like the fellow I am with now.  Bamtz is terrified of
+them, and they know it.  He's in it from funk.  Oh, Davy! take your ship
+away--quick!'
+
+"'Too late,' said Davidson.  'She's on the mud already.'
+
+"If the kid hadn't been in this state I would have run off with him--to
+you--into the woods--anywhere.  Oh, Davy! will he die?' she cried aloud
+suddenly.
+
+"Davidson met three men in the doorway.  They made way for him without
+actually daring to face his glance.  But Bamtz was the only one who
+looked down with an air of guilt.  The big Frenchman had remained lolling
+in his chair; he kept his stumps in his pockets and addressed Davidson.
+
+"'Isn't it unfortunate about that child!  The distress of that woman
+there upsets me, but I am of no use in the world.  I couldn't smooth the
+sick pillow of my dearest friend.  I have no hands.  Would you mind
+sticking one of those cigarettes there into the mouth of a poor, harmless
+cripple?  My nerves want soothing--upon my honour, they do.'
+
+"Davidson complied with his naturally kind smile.  As his outward
+placidity becomes only more pronounced, if possible, the more reason
+there is for excitement; and as Davidson's eyes, when his wits are hard
+at work, get very still and as if sleepy, the huge Frenchman might have
+been justified in concluding that the man there was a mere sheep--a sheep
+ready for slaughter.  With a '_merci bien_' he uplifted his huge carcase
+to reach the light of the candle with his cigarette, and Davidson left
+the house.
+
+"Going down to the ship and returning, he had time to consider his
+position.  At first he was inclined to believe that these men
+(Niclaus--the white Nakhoda--was the only one he knew by sight before,
+besides Bamtz) were not of the stamp to proceed to extremities.  This was
+partly the reason why he never attempted to take any measures on board.
+His pacific Kalashes were not to be thought of as against white men.  His
+wretched engineer would have had a fit from fright at the mere idea of
+any sort of combat.  Davidson knew that he would have to depend on
+himself in this affair if it ever came off.
+
+"Davidson underestimated naturally the driving power of the Frenchman's
+character and the force of the actuating motive.  To that man so
+hopelessly crippled these dollars were an enormous opportunity.  With his
+share of the robbery he would open another shop in Vladivostok, Haiphong,
+Manila--somewhere far away.
+
+"Neither did it occur to Davidson, who is a man of courage, if ever there
+was one, that his psychology was not known to the world at large, and
+that to this particular lot of ruffians, who judged him by his
+appearance, he appeared an unsuspicious, inoffensive, soft creature, as
+he passed again through the room, his hands full of various objects and
+parcels destined for the sick boy.
+
+"All the four were sitting again round the table.  Bamtz not having the
+pluck to open his mouth, it was Niclaus who, as a collective voice,
+called out to him thickly to come out soon and join in a drink.
+
+"'I think I'll have to stay some little time in there, to help her look
+after the boy,' Davidson answered without stopping.
+
+"This was a good thing to say to allay a possible suspicion.  And, as it
+was, Davidson felt he must not stay very long.
+
+"He sat down on an old empty nail-keg near the improvised cot and looked
+at the child; while Laughing Anne, moving to and fro, preparing the hot
+drink, giving it to the boy in spoonfuls, or stopping to gaze motionless
+at the flushed face, whispered disjointed bits of information.  She had
+succeeded in making friends with that French devil.  Davy would
+understand that she knew how to make herself pleasant to a man.
+
+"And Davidson nodded without looking at her.
+
+"The big beast had got to be quite confidential with her.  She held his
+cards for him when they were having a game.  Bamtz!  Oh!  Bamtz in his
+funk was only too glad to see the Frenchman humoured.  And the Frenchman
+had come to believe that she was a woman who didn't care what she did.
+That's how it came about they got to talk before her openly.  For a long
+time she could not make out what game they were up to.  The new arrivals,
+not expecting to find a woman with Bamtz, had been very startled and
+annoyed at first, she explained.
+
+"She busied herself in attending to the boy; and nobody looking into that
+room would have seen anything suspicious in those two people exchanging
+murmurs by the sick-bedside.
+
+"'But now they think I am a better man than Bamtz ever was,' she said
+with a faint laugh.
+
+"The child moaned.  She went down on her knees, and, bending low,
+contemplated him mournfully.  Then raising her head, she asked Davidson
+whether he thought the child would get better.  Davidson was sure of it.
+She murmured sadly: 'Poor kid.  There's nothing in life for such as he.
+Not a dog's chance.  But I couldn't let him go, Davy!  I couldn't.'
+
+"Davidson felt a profound pity for the child.  She laid her hand on his
+knee and whispered an earnest warning against the Frenchman.  Davy must
+never let him come to close quarters.  Naturally Davidson wanted to know
+the reason, for a man without hands did not strike him as very formidable
+under any circumstances.
+
+"'Mind you don't let him--that's all,' she insisted anxiously, hesitated,
+and then confessed that the Frenchman had got her away from the others
+that afternoon and had ordered her to tie a seven-pound iron weight (out
+of the set of weights Bamtz used in business) to his right stump.  She
+had to do it for him.  She had been afraid of his savage temper.  Bamtz
+was such a craven, and neither of the other men would have cared what
+happened to her.  The Frenchman, however, with many awful threats had
+warned her not to let the others know what she had done for him.
+Afterwards he had been trying to cajole her.  He had promised her that if
+she stood by him faithfully in this business he would take her with him
+to Haiphong or some other place.  A poor cripple needed somebody to take
+care of him--always.
+
+"Davidson asked her again if they really meant mischief.  It was, he told
+me, the hardest thing to believe he had run up against, as yet, in his
+life.  Anne nodded.  The Frenchman's heart was set on this robbery.  Davy
+might expect them, about midnight, creeping on board his ship, to steal
+anyhow--to murder, perhaps.  Her voice sounded weary, and her eyes
+remained fastened on her child.
+
+"And still Davidson could not accept it somehow; his contempt for these
+men was too great.
+
+"'Look here, Davy,' she said.  'I'll go outside with them when they
+start, and it will be hard luck if I don't find something to laugh at.
+They are used to that from me.  Laugh or cry--what's the odds.  You will
+be able to hear me on board on this quiet night.  Dark it is too.  Oh!
+it's dark, Davy!--it's dark!'
+
+"'Don't you run any risks,' said Davidson.  Presently he called her
+attention to the boy, who, less flushed now, had dropped into a sound
+sleep.  'Look.  He'll be all right.'
+
+"She made as if to snatch the child up to her breast, but restrained
+herself.  Davidson prepared to go.  She whispered hurriedly:
+
+"'Mind, Davy!  I've told them that you generally sleep aft in the hammock
+under the awning over the cabin.  They have been asking me about your
+ways and about your ship, too.  I told them all I knew.  I had to keep in
+with them.  And Bamtz would have told them if I hadn't--you understand?'
+
+"He made a friendly sign and went out.  The men about the table (except
+Bamtz) looked at him.  This time it was Fector who spoke.  'Won't you
+join us in a quiet game, Captain?'
+
+"Davidson said that now the child was better he thought he would go on
+board and turn in.  Fector was the only one of the four whom he had, so
+to speak, never seen, for he had had a good look at the Frenchman
+already.  He observed Fector's muddy eyes, his mean, bitter mouth.
+Davidson's contempt for those men rose in his gorge, while his placid
+smile, his gentle tones and general air of innocence put heart into them.
+They exchanged meaning glances.
+
+"'We shall be sitting late over the cards,' Fector said in his harsh, low
+voice.
+
+"'Don't make more noise than you can help.'
+
+"'Oh! we are a quiet lot.  And if the invalid shouldn't be so well, she
+will be sure to send one of us down to call you, so that you may play the
+doctor again.  So don't shoot at sight.'
+
+"'He isn't a shooting man,' struck in Niclaus.
+
+"'I never shoot before making sure there's a reason for it--at any rate,'
+said Davidson.
+
+"Bamtz let out a sickly snigger.  The Frenchman alone got up to make a
+bow to Davidson's careless nod.  His stumps were stuck immovably in his
+pockets.  Davidson understood now the reason.
+
+"He went down to the ship.  His wits were working actively, and he was
+thoroughly angry.  He smiled, he says (it must have been the first grim
+smile of his life), at the thought of the seven-pound weight lashed to
+the end of the Frenchman's stump.  The ruffian had taken that precaution
+in case of a quarrel that might arise over the division of the spoil.  A
+man with an unsuspected power to deal killing blows could take his own
+part in a sudden scrimmage round a heap of money, even against
+adversaries armed with revolvers, especially if he himself started the
+row.
+
+"'He's ready to face any of his friends with that thing.  But he will
+have no use for it.  There will be no occasion to quarrel about these
+dollars here,' thought Davidson, getting on board quietly.  He never
+paused to look if there was anybody about the decks.  As a matter of
+fact, most of his crew were on shore, and the rest slept, stowed away in
+dark corners.
+
+"He had his plan, and he went to work methodically.
+
+"He fetched a lot of clothing from below and disposed it in his hammock
+in such a way as to distend it to the shape of a human body; then he
+threw over all the light cotton sheet he used to draw over himself when
+sleeping on deck.  Having done this, he loaded his two revolvers and
+clambered into one of the boats the _Sissie_ carried right aft, swung out
+on their davits.  Then he waited.
+
+"And again the doubt of such a thing happening to him crept into his
+mind.  He was almost ashamed of this ridiculous vigil in a boat.  He
+became bored.  And then he became drowsy.  The stillness of the black
+universe wearied him.  There was not even the lapping of the water to
+keep him company, for the tide was out and the _Sissie_ was lying on soft
+mud.  Suddenly in the breathless, soundless, hot night an argus pheasant
+screamed in the woods across the stream.  Davidson started violently, all
+his senses on the alert at once.
+
+"The candle was still burning in the house.  Everything was quiet again,
+but Davidson felt drowsy no longer.  An uneasy premonition of evil
+oppressed him.
+
+"'Surely I am not afraid,' he argued with himself.
+
+"The silence was like a seal on his ears, and his nervous inward
+impatience grew intolerable.  He commanded himself to keep still.  But
+all the same he was just going to jump out of the boat when a faint
+ripple on the immensity of silence, a mere tremor in the air, the ghost
+of a silvery laugh, reached his ears.
+
+"Illusion!
+
+"He kept very still.  He had no difficulty now in emulating the stillness
+of the mouse--a grimly determined mouse.  But he could not shake off that
+premonition of evil unrelated to the mere danger of the situation.
+Nothing happened.  It had been an illusion!
+
+"A curiosity came to him to learn how they would go to work.  He wondered
+and wondered, till the whole thing seemed more absurd than ever.
+
+"He had left the hanging lamp in the cabin burning as usual.  It was part
+of his plan that everything should be as usual.  Suddenly in the dim glow
+of the skylight panes a bulky shadow came up the ladder without a sound,
+made two steps towards the hammock (it hung right over the skylight), and
+stood motionless.  The Frenchman!
+
+"The minutes began to slip away.  Davidson guessed that the Frenchman's
+part (the poor cripple) was to watch his (Davidson's) slumbers while the
+others were no doubt in the cabin busy forcing off the lazarette hatch.
+
+"What was the course they meant to pursue once they got hold of the
+silver (there were ten cases, and each could be carried easily by two
+men) nobody can tell now.  But so far, Davidson was right.  They were in
+the cabin.  He expected to hear the sounds of breaking-in every moment.
+But the fact was that one of them (perhaps Fector, who had stolen papers
+out of desks in his time) knew how to pick a lock, and apparently was
+provided with the tools.  Thus while Davidson expected every moment to
+hear them begin down there, they had the bar off already and two cases
+actually up in the cabin out of the lazarette.
+
+"In the diffused faint glow of the skylight the Frenchman moved no more
+than a statue.  Davidson could have shot him with the greatest ease--but
+he was not homicidally inclined.  Moreover, he wanted to make sure before
+opening fire that the others had gone to work.  Not hearing the sounds he
+expected to hear, he felt uncertain whether they all were on board yet.
+
+"While he listened, the Frenchman, whose immobility might have but
+cloaked an internal struggle; moved forward a pace, then another.
+Davidson, entranced, watched him advance one leg, withdraw his right
+stump, the armed one, out of his pocket, and swinging his body to put
+greater force into the blow, bring the seven-pound weight down on the
+hammock where the head of the sleeper ought to have been.
+
+"Davidson admitted to me that his hair stirred at the roots then.  But
+for Anne, his unsuspecting head would have been there.  The Frenchman's
+surprise must have been simply overwhelming.  He staggered away from the
+lightly swinging hammock, and before Davidson could make a movement he
+had vanished, bounding down the ladder to warn and alarm the other
+fellows.
+
+"Davidson sprang instantly out of the boat, threw up the skylight flap,
+and had a glimpse of the men down there crouching round the hatch.  They
+looked up scared, and at that moment the Frenchman outside the door
+bellowed out '_Trahison_--_trahison_!'  They bolted out of the cabin,
+falling over each other and swearing awfully.  The shot Davidson let off
+down the skylight had hit no one; but he ran to the edge of the cabin-top
+and at once opened fire at the dark shapes rushing about the deck.  These
+shots were returned, and a rapid fusillade burst out, reports and
+flashes, Davidson dodging behind a ventilator and pulling the trigger
+till his revolver clicked, and then throwing it down to take the other in
+his right hand.
+
+"He had been hearing in the din the Frenchman's infuriated yells
+'_Tuez-le_! _tuez-le_!' above the fierce cursing of the others.  But
+though they fired at him they were only thinking of clearing out.  In the
+flashes of the last shots Davidson saw them scrambling over the rail.
+That he had hit more than one he was certain.  Two different voices had
+cried out in pain.  But apparently none of them were disabled.
+
+"Davidson leaned against the bulwark reloading his revolver without
+haste.  He had not the slightest apprehension of their coming back.  On
+the other hand, he had no intention of pursuing them on shore in the
+dark.  What they were doing he had no idea.  Looking to their hurts
+probably.  Not very far from the bank the invisible Frenchman was
+blaspheming and cursing his associates, his luck, and all the world.  He
+ceased; then with a sudden, vengeful yell, 'It's that woman!--it's that
+woman that has sold us,' was heard running off in the night.
+
+"Davidson caught his breath in a sudden pang of remorse.  He perceived
+with dismay that the stratagem of his defence had given Anne away.  He
+did not hesitate a moment.  It was for him to save her now.  He leaped
+ashore.  But even as he landed on the wharf he heard a shrill shriek
+which pierced his very soul.
+
+"The light was still burning in the house.  Davidson, revolver in hand,
+was making for it when another shriek, away to his left, made him change
+his direction.
+
+"He changed his direction--but very soon he stopped.  It was then that he
+hesitated in cruel perplexity.  He guessed what had happened.  The woman
+had managed to escape from the house in some way, and now was being
+chased in the open by the infuriated Frenchman.  He trusted she would try
+to run on board for protection.
+
+"All was still around Davidson.  Whether she had run on board or not,
+this silence meant that the Frenchman had lost her in the dark.
+
+"Davidson, relieved, but still very anxious, turned towards the
+river-side.  He had not made two steps in that direction when another
+shriek burst out behind him, again close to the house.
+
+"He thinks that the Frenchman had lost sight of the poor woman right
+enough.  Then came that period of silence.  But the horrible ruffian had
+not given up his murderous purpose.  He reasoned that she would try to
+steal back to her child, and went to lie in wait for her near the house.
+
+"It must have been something like that.  As she entered the light falling
+about the house-ladder, he had rushed at her too soon, impatient for
+vengeance.  She had let out that second scream of mortal fear when she
+caught sight of him, and turned to run for life again.
+
+"This time she was making for the river, but not in a straight line.  Her
+shrieks circled about Davidson.  He turned on his heels, following the
+horrible trail of sound in the darkness.  He wanted to shout 'This way,
+Anne!  I am here!' but he couldn't.  At the horror of this chase, more
+ghastly in his imagination than if he could have seen it, the
+perspiration broke out on his forehead, while his throat was as dry as
+tinder.  A last supreme scream was cut short suddenly.
+
+"The silence which ensued was even more dreadful.  Davidson felt sick.
+He tore his feet from the spot and walked straight before him, gripping
+the revolver and peering into the obscurity fearfully.  Suddenly a bulky
+shape sprang from the ground within a few yards of him and bounded away.
+Instinctively he fired at it, started to run in pursuit, and stumbled
+against something soft which threw him down headlong.
+
+"Even as he pitched forward on his head he knew it could be nothing else
+but Laughing Anne's body.  He picked himself up and, remaining on his
+knees, tried to lift her in his arms.  He felt her so limp that he gave
+it up.  She was lying on her face, her long hair scattered on the ground.
+Some of it was wet.  Davidson, feeling about her head, came to a place
+where the crushed bone gave way under his fingers.  But even before that
+discovery he knew that she was dead.  The pursuing Frenchman had flung
+her down with a kick from behind, and, squatting on her back, was
+battering in her skull with the weight she herself had fastened to his
+stump, when the totally unexpected Davidson loomed up in the night and
+scared him away.
+
+"Davidson, kneeling by the side of that woman done so miserably to death,
+was overcome by remorse.  She had died for him.  His manhood was as if
+stunned.  For the first time he felt afraid.  He might have been pounced
+upon in the dark at any moment by the murderer of Laughing Anne.  He
+confesses to the impulse of creeping away from that pitiful corpse on his
+hands and knees to the refuge of the ship.  He even says that he actually
+began to do so. . .
+
+"One can hardly picture to oneself Davidson crawling away on all fours
+from the murdered woman--Davidson unmanned and crushed by the idea that
+she had died for him in a sense.  But he could not have gone very far.
+What stopped him was the thought of the boy, Laughing Anne's child, that
+(Davidson remembered her very words) would not have a dog's chance.
+
+"This life the woman had left behind her appeared to Davidson's
+conscience in the light of a sacred trust.  He assumed an erect attitude
+and, quaking inwardly still, turned about and walked towards the house.
+
+"For all his tremors he was very determined; but that smashed skull had
+affected his imagination, and he felt very defenceless in the darkness,
+in which he seemed to hear faintly now here, now there, the prowling
+footsteps of the murderer without hands.  But he never faltered in his
+purpose.  He got away with the boy safely after all.  The house he found
+empty.  A profound silence encompassed him all the time, except once,
+just as he got down the ladder with Tony in his arms, when a faint groan
+reached his ears.  It seemed to come from the pitch-black space between
+the posts on which the house was built, but he did not stop to
+investigate.
+
+"It's no use telling you in detail how Davidson got on board with the
+burden Anne's miserably cruel fate had thrust into his arms; how next
+morning his scared crew, after observing from a distance the state of
+affairs on board, rejoined with alacrity; how Davidson went ashore and,
+aided by his engineer (still half dead with fright), rolled up Laughing
+Anne's body in a cotton sheet and brought it on board for burial at sea
+later.  While busy with this pious task, Davidson, glancing about,
+perceived a huge heap of white clothes huddled up against the corner-post
+of the house.  That it was the Frenchman lying there he could not doubt.
+Taking it in connection with the dismal groan he had heard in the night,
+Davidson is pretty sure that his random shot gave a mortal hurt to the
+murderer of poor Anne.
+
+"As to the others, Davidson never set eyes on a single one of them.
+Whether they had concealed themselves in the scared settlement, or bolted
+into the forest, or were hiding on board Niclaus's prau, which could be
+seen lying on the mud a hundred yards or so higher up the creek, the fact
+is that they vanished; and Davidson did not trouble his head about them.
+He lost no time in getting out of the creek directly the _Sissie_
+floated.  After steaming some twenty miles clear of the coast, he (in his
+own words) 'committed the body to the deep.'  He did everything himself.
+He weighted her down with a few fire-bars, he read the service, he lifted
+the plank, he was the only mourner.  And while he was rendering these
+last services to the dead, the desolation of that life and the atrocious
+wretchedness of its end cried aloud to his compassion, whispered to him
+in tones of self-reproach.
+
+"He ought to have handled the warning she had given him in another way.
+He was convinced now that a simple display of watchfulness would have
+been enough to restrain that vile and cowardly crew.  But the fact was
+that he had not quite believed that anything would be attempted.
+
+"The body of Laughing Anne having been 'committed to the deep' some
+twenty miles S.S.W. from Cape Selatan, the task before Davidson was to
+commit Laughing Anne's child to the care of his wife.  And there poor,
+good Davidson made a fatal move.  He didn't want to tell her the whole
+awful story, since it involved the knowledge of the danger from which he,
+Davidson, had escaped.  And this, too, after he had been laughing at her
+unreasonable fears only a short time before.
+
+"'I thought that if I told her everything,' Davidson explained to me,
+'she would never have a moment's peace while I was away on my trips.'
+
+"He simply stated that the boy was an orphan, the child of some people to
+whom he, Davidson, was under the greatest obligation, and that he felt
+morally bound to look after him.  Some day he would tell her more, he
+said, and meantime he trusted in the goodness and warmth of her heart, in
+her woman's natural compassion.
+
+"He did not know that her heart was about the size of a parched pea, and
+had the proportional amount of warmth; and that her faculty of compassion
+was mainly directed to herself.  He was only startled and disappointed at
+the air of cold surprise and the suspicious look with which she received
+his imperfect tale.  But she did not say much.  She never had much to
+say.  She was a fool of the silent, hopeless kind.
+
+"What story Davidson's crew thought fit to set afloat in Malay town is
+neither here nor there.  Davidson himself took some of his friends into
+his confidence, besides giving the full story officially to the Harbour
+Master.
+
+"The Harbour Master was considerably astonished.  He didn't think,
+however, that a formal complaint should be made to the Dutch Government.
+They would probably do nothing in the end, after a lot of trouble and
+correspondence.  The robbery had not come off, after all.  Those
+vagabonds could be trusted to go to the devil in their own way.  No
+amount of fuss would bring the poor woman to life again, and the actual
+murderer had been done justice to by a chance shot from Davidson.  Better
+let the matter drop.
+
+"This was good common sense.  But he was impressed.
+
+"'Sounds a terrible affair, Captain Davidson.'
+
+"'Aye, terrible enough,' agreed the remorseful Davidson.  But the most
+terrible thing for him, though he didn't know it yet then, was that his
+wife's silly brain was slowly coming to the conclusion that Tony was
+Davidson's child, and that he had invented that lame story to introduce
+him into her pure home in defiance of decency, of virtue--of her most
+sacred feelings.
+
+"Davidson was aware of some constraint in his domestic relations.  But at
+the best of times she was not demonstrative; and perhaps that very
+coldness was part of her charm in the placid Davidson's eyes.  Women are
+loved for all sorts of reasons and even for characteristics which one
+would think repellent.  She was watching him and nursing her suspicions.
+
+"Then, one day, Monkey-faced Ritchie called on that sweet, shy Mrs.
+Davidson.  She had come out under his care, and he considered himself a
+privileged person--her oldest friend in the tropics.  He posed for a
+great admirer of hers.  He was always a great chatterer.  He had got hold
+of the story rather vaguely, and he started chattering on that subject,
+thinking she knew all about it.  And in due course he let out something
+about Laughing Anne.
+
+"'Laughing Anne,' says Mrs. Davidson with a start.  'What's that?'
+
+"Ritchie plunged into circumlocution at once, but she very soon stopped
+him.  'Is that creature dead?' she asks.
+
+"'I believe so,' stammered Ritchie.  'Your husband says so.'
+
+"'But you don't know for certain?'
+
+"'No!  How could I, Mrs. Davidson!'
+
+"'That's all wanted to know,' says she, and goes out of the room.
+
+"When Davidson came home she was ready to go for him, not with common
+voluble indignation, but as if trickling a stream of cold clear water
+down his back.  She talked of his base intrigue with a vile woman, of
+being made a fool of, of the insult to her dignity.
+
+"Davidson begged her to listen to him and told her all the story,
+thinking that it would move a heart of stone.  He tried to make her
+understand his remorse.  She heard him to the end, said 'Indeed!' and
+turned her back on him.
+
+"'Don't you believe me?' he asked, appalled.
+
+"She didn't say yes or no.  All she said was, 'Send that brat away at
+once.'
+
+"'I can't throw him out into the street,' cried Davidson.  'You don't
+mean it.'
+
+"'I don't care.  There are charitable institutions for such children, I
+suppose.'
+
+"'That I will never do,' said Davidson.
+
+"'Very well.  That's enough for me.'
+
+"Davidson's home after this was like a silent, frozen hell for him.  A
+stupid woman with a sense of grievance is worse than an unchained devil.
+He sent the boy to the White Fathers in Malacca.  This was not a very
+expensive sort of education, but she could not forgive him for not
+casting the offensive child away utterly.  She worked up her sense of her
+wifely wrongs and of her injured purity to such a pitch that one day,
+when poor Davidson was pleading with her to be reasonable and not to make
+an impossible existence for them both, she turned on him in a chill
+passion and told him that his very sight was odious to her.
+
+"Davidson, with his scrupulous delicacy of feeling, was not the man to
+assert his rights over a woman who could not bear the sight of him.  He
+bowed his head; and shortly afterwards arranged for her to go back to her
+parents.  That was exactly what she wanted in her outraged dignity.  And
+then she had always disliked the tropics and had detested secretly the
+people she had to live amongst as Davidson's wife.  She took her pure,
+sensitive, mean little soul away to Fremantle or somewhere in that
+direction.  And of course the little girl went away with her too.  What
+could poor Davidson have done with a little girl on his hands, even if
+she had consented to leave her with him--which is unthinkable.
+
+"This is the story that has spoiled Davidson's smile for him--which
+perhaps it wouldn't have done so thoroughly had he been less of a good
+fellow."
+
+Hollis ceased.  But before we rose from the table I asked him if he knew
+what had become of Laughing Anne's boy.
+
+He counted carefully the change handed him by the Chinaman waiter, and
+raised his head.
+
+"Oh! that's the finishing touch.  He was a bright, taking little chap, as
+you know, and the Fathers took very special pains in his bringing up.
+Davidson expected in his heart to have some comfort out of him.  In his
+placid way he's a man who needs affection.  Well, Tony has grown into a
+fine youth--but there you are!  He wants to be a priest; his one dream is
+to be a missionary.  The Fathers assure Davidson that it is a serious
+vocation.  They tell him he has a special disposition for mission work,
+too.  So Laughing Anne's boy will lead a saintly life in China somewhere;
+he may even become a martyr; but poor Davidson is left out in the cold.
+He will have to go downhill without a single human affection near him
+because of these old dollars."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Jan._ 1914
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH, ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+{188}  The gallows, supposed to be widowed of the last executed criminal
+and waiting for another.
+
+
+
+
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