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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

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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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