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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Within the Tides, by Joseph Conrad
+(#14 in our series by Joseph Conrad)
+
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+
+Title: Within the Tides
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+Release Date: September, 1997  [EBook #1053]
+[This file was first posted on August 29, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: June 24, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WITHIN THE TIDES ***
+
+
+
+
+Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+Within the Tides
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+The Planter of Malata
+The Partner
+The Inn of the Two Witches
+Because of the Dollars
+
+
+
+
+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 armchair.  "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 Moorsonian 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." {1}
+
+"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 those 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 fen 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
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  The gallows, supposed to be widowed of the last executed
+criminal and waiting for another.
+
+
+
+
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