South of the Line/The Complete Beachcomber

by Ralph Stock

 

The Complete Beachcomber

THE imitation pink coral factory was situated high up on a cliff about a mile along the coast from Levuka.

Those who associate the word "factory" with a mental picture of towering chimneys belching black smoke, the hum of machinery, and streams of pale-faced men and women hurrying to work with papier mâché dispatch cases of lunch in their hands, will be grievously disappointed, because in this particular instance the factory belonged to Felisi of Luana, and, like its inventor, the process of production was as simple as it was effective.

You merely go out to the reef at low tide, collect as many of the myriad white coral fronds from the rock pools as you can comfortably carry in a reed basket, and take it on your head up to the factory. There you will find a miniature waterfall gushing down the rocks behind Jimmie's house, and after placing the coral fronds under the fresh water—which, of course, kills the poor little coral polyp and turns his limy, grayish-green house into a snow-white thing of beauty—you squat in the sun, smoking and listening to Jimmie's latest effusion, declaimed in rolling accents to the four winds of the Pacific Ocean before he trades it at the nearest store for a tin of kerosene or bottle of whisky.

This may take an hour, and it may take longer, but at the end of it you mix a packet of a popular dye in a bucket of water and allow the snow-white coral to soak in it. This turns it pink—pink all through, because coral is absorbent—and you sell it to tourists on Levuka wharf in very small quantities and for fabulous sums, because pink coral is scarce.

Yes, Felisi had returned to coral selling on the wharf. The white people on the Rena River, where she had been "something in the nature of a lady's maid," had gone "home," and there was still a goodly number of gold discs to be collected by Felisi and her female relations before a certain wonderful boat became her father's property.

Felisi was far from pleased at the change of employment. For an ardent student of the white man and his ways, the tourists on the wharf, not to mention a nagging aunt at home, offered a poor substitute for the freedom of movement and observation in a white household. To be sure, there was Jimmie. But then there was always Jimmie; he was as much a part of Levuka as the beach itself, and he offered no new problem to puzzle and enthral.

To Felisi, as to all natives of "The Islands of the Blessed," there are only two kinds of white men—those who belong and those who do not belong. The former variety wears soiled ducks and a battered pith helmet, drinks rather more than the climate allows, understands the natives, and seems as happy and contented as the day is long, provided he has tobacco, whisky, bed, and friends. The other wears clean starched ducks with a knife-like crease down the front of the trousers—which, by the way, are always turned up at the bottom—a magnificent solar topee, and an art-coloured tie. He knows nothing of the native, and cares less, and he carries his troubles with him out of the world into the Islands, which results in his having a careworn appearance and always being in a hurry.

Then there is the super white man—he of speckless white flannel and white felt hat—but Felisi knew little of him, except that on the wharf he and his women folk were the easiest prey to imitation pink coral.

Jimmie belonged to the first of this category, and for this reason Felisi understood and loved the old man, as she understood and loved the rainbow-tinted fish in a rock pool. Moreover, his tin bucket and miniature waterfall were exceedingly useful.

The dyeing process was in full swing when he caught sight of her this morning, on her return from the Rena River, and he welcomed her as though she had never been absent.

"Hi, Felisi!" he bellowed, advancing on her with a sheet of crumpled paper fluttering from his hand, and the light of inspiration flashing in his eye. "If this doesn't get 'em, nothing will. It's a peach, a rip-snorter, a—— Listen to this!"

Jimmie had been a large man. His frame was still large, especially the feet, but he had lost flesh. He occasionally ate, but what he really lived on was tobacco and whisky, and perhaps this had something to do with his woeful skinniness. He still had a well-shaped head and remarkable hands. Felisi had often watched these hands of Jimmie's and marvelled at their shapeliness. Apart from them and his head, he was a scarecrow. His hair and beard were like gray birds' nests, and his clothes—scanty enough, in all conscience—seemed to touch him nowhere but at the shoulders.

He was sitting now on the edge of the cliff—his favourite seat—with his enormous feet dangling over the edge, and one shapely hand upraised as though in exhortation, as he gave a gentle southeast Trade the benefit of the following in a rolling baritone—

"Oh, wondrous Isle of Ovalau,
How oft I ponder on thy charms!
Naught can compare with thee, I vow,
Thy green, green hills and nodding palms!

Beautiful, you know," he added, with an air of pardonable pride, "really, beautiful that. You notice, it rolls—literally rolls off the tongue, and the sentiment's sound—perfectly sound."

He was not addressing Felisi, but the proprietress of the imitation pink coral factory knew this perfectly well, and did not resent it in the least. It was a way of Jimmie's. She represented a figure-head at which he could hurl his rhetoric without fear of criticism—a useful article for a poet to have on occasions. But this morning he was not aware that Felisi had only just relinquished a position in a white household, where her English vocabulary had been greatly augmented.

"Why you say 'green, green'?" she demanded, lifting a frond of coral out of the dye and placing it in the sun to dry.

Jimmie started visibly, then remembered he was on the cliff, and swung himself into safety. The figure-head had spoken!

"Aha," he warned, when he had recovered from the shock, and wagging an attenuated finger at Felisi, "the little knowledge that is a dangerous thing! And not so slow, either," he added reflectively "I'm not sure that I like 'green, green' myself. Permissible, entirely permissible, but cheap." He looked up with distress written plainly on the yellow parchment of his face. "You have put your finger on the weak spot, my dear."

He looked so unlike his usual cheerful self at that moment that, although Felisi appreciated the compliment, she was sorry she had spoken.

"There have to be two words there," he mused; "one feels that—metre, but suitable adjectives were always my weak point. Vivid! No, two syllables. Pale! No, that would not be painting a true picture. Pure! Rotten!" Jimmie squirmed in the grass and cast appealing eyes to heaven.

"Big," suggested Felisi.

Jimmy became suddenly still, and frowned, then smiled.

"Tall," he said, lingering over the word as if it pleased him.

"Thy tall green hills and nodding palms."

"You did that, Felisi," he told her, as though acquainting her of a self-accomplished miracle. "And now we come to the point—a fall from Pegasus, I admit, but a necessary fall." The hand was again upraised.

"Yet stop——

(And here is where the attention is at once arrested. Parsons can't help seeing that)

"Yet stop! There is one other feast
Afforded by this isle afar,
And that is Boulton's store down East,
Where dwells the only real cigar.

So mild it is, so succulent
It wafts——"

Entirely by accident Felisi dropped a frond of coral into the dye. It made a sickening splash, and Jimmie stopped like a clock with a broken mainspring. He said nothing—what was there to say?—but his pained look went to Felisi's heart.

"Me sorry, Jimmie," she pleaded, squatting in the grass before him; "you no stop, please."

"If you're ready," said Jimmie, with dignity, "we'll go down and sell our produce."

They descended the red earth track together, Felisi with a light step and a basket of coral on her head, Jimmie with his loose-jointed shuffle and a scrap of paper neatly folded in his pocket. This scrap of paper was the only thing in life that Jimmie was neat about.

He chuckled as they crossed the bridge and turned on to the beach.

"We're a couple of impostors, Felisi," he told her, in a confidential undertone.

"Impostors," mimicked Felisi.

"Yes, pretenders. Your coral isn't real. My poem isn't real."

"Poem no real?" she queried, in genuine surprise.

"No, it can't be. It's too easy. You just put down a word—coral, anything—then think of a word that rhymes with it—moral, anything—and fill in the rest how you like. It's too easy; but I mustn't let 'em know it," he chuckled. "Oh, dear, no—any more than you must let 'em know how you make pink coral."

They laughed together in the sunlight, a laugh of mutual understanding.

Felisi felt a certain sense of proprietorship in Jimmie's poem. Had she not helped to supply a word—a very vital word? She determined to see it sold. The basket of coral was left with the nagging aunt, and Felisi followed Jimmie into Parsons's store. She wondered, as she threaded her way through the stacks of kerosene, tins, rope, leaf tobacco, and coloured shirts, why he had come to Parsons's when the poem distinctly said "Boulton's," but it was soon made apparent.

"Good morning, Mr. Parsons," was Jimmie's greeting, and he said it as though he meant it, as though it were an entirely original remark.

"Morning, Jim."

Missi Parsonic was a busy man. At eighty degrees in the shade, without a customer in sight, and as much chance of doing business as a derelict whaler, he was always busy. He had learnt his methods in America, and they had answered, if the prosperity of his store went for anything. With garters on his sleeves, and an intent expression on his hatchet face, he was sorting shirts at the moment; but there was an open tin of mixed biscuits on the counter, and from this Jimmie daintily extracted samples from time to time, and ate them with the air of a connoisseur.

"An uncommonly fine morning, for the hurricane season," remarked Jimmie. "This is a much-maligned country, Mr. Parsons. Hurricane season, indeed!" His indignation had the effect of accelerating the consumption of biscuits. "They should go to the Malay States if they want to see hurricanes. Ours are a mere zephyr—zephyr, sir, in comparison." At the end of the counter were stacked packets of safety matches and tins of tobacco. Jimmie sidled along the counter, talking as he went, and appropriated one of each with the utmost delicacy and frankness. Missi Parsonie had disapproved, but slowly he had given way, finding it better to conform to old-established institutions than to get himself disliked—even by Jimmie.

His "shopping" completed, and the two pockets of his disreputable jacket bulging generously, Jimmie took a half seat by the side of the counter, and produced the neatly folded paper. He cleared his throat.

"I have here," he said impressively, tapping the paper with his attenuated forefinger, "I have here something that will interest you, Mr. Parsons"—Missi Parsonie regarded Jimmie without emotion—"a little thing that I must confess gave me considerable trouble. But I think it's worth it. It will look well in the Herald—in block type, you know, with good spacing—well, like Boulton's of last week."

"Boulton's?" queried Missi Parsonie, with a faint frown.

"Yes, I think he'll like this one, don't you—as a man of judgment—Mr. Parsons?"

He read the poem from beginning to end, still in the rolling baritone, still with the shapely hand upraised. But Missi Parsonie seemed quite unimpressed. As a matter of fact, this thing was beginning to annoy him. Each week—for a month, now—his rival Boulton had actually bought this trash from Jim and printed it over the signature of "James" in the Herald. And it was catching on—that was the absurdity and the exasperation of it. Everyone—even up country—knew Jim, and they had come to look for his weekly effusion.

"That's all right, Jim, I guess," he admitted, "though I'm not much of a judge of that sort of thing. Boulton ought to like it. He handles cigars; we don't."

"And what is your specialty, Mr. Parsons?"

"Well, just at present we're handling a line of zephyr vest that's going to show folks how to dress in the tropics."

"Vests!" cried Jimmie, with sudden animation. "Vest, you said. I like it better—positively, I like it better! More opportunities with 'vest.' How's this? The first verse can stand, then—

"Yet stop! There is one other feast
Upon this Island of the Blest,
And that is Parsons's store down East,
Where dwells the only zephyr vest.

"So cool it is, so feather-light,
It sits with such an easy grace,
That you may walk with all your might
And not a bead will beck your face."

Jimmie stopped, expectant. Missi Parsonie had resumed his task of sorting shirts.

"Y-e-s," he said, "something like that, and I'll take it. I want five verses, each bringing in 'Parsons's Zephyr Vest,' just like that. I shan't want the first verse. What do you charge?"

Jimmie leant over the counter and whispered into Missi Parsonie's ear. The latter looked up doubtfully, then nodded.

"And in advance," added Jimmie, with unlooked-for firmness. "It takes a lot out of one, though you might not think it, Mr. Parsons. It is doubtful if I shall sleep to-night. You shall have it first thing in the morning."

Missi Parsonie hesitated.

"Mr. Boulton always pays in advance. One must live, you know," added Jimmie, with quiet dignity.

Missi Parsonie disappeared behind a stack of kerosene cases, and to Felisi it was a curious thing that, while he was gone, Jimmie helped himself to nothing, not even a biscuit.

A few minutes later he shuffled out on to the beach, carrying a parcel packed to look like anything but what it was, and failing utterly.

There were discreet sounds of revelry issuing from Jimmie's house when Felisi visited the factory that evening. She knew there would be, and she entered without knocking.

The old man was sitting at the packing case which did service for a table, with a litter of paper at his elbows, talking quietly to himself. He took no notice of her entrance, and she sat and listened. These self-communings of Jimmie's always interested her.

"Parsons's zephyr vest," he said, three times and very distinctly. "Vest—west—best—blest—test—messed—jest...." His voice trailed away as rain commenced to patter on the corrugated iron roof. A wistful look came into Jimmie's eyes; then he seemed to notice Felisi for the first time. He looked at her, and commenced to speak.

"Rain! I never hear rain, never see it sloping down—rain, rain, rain—without thinking of Watlington, and then it all comes back—all of it—ugh!" He shuddered convulsively. "Fancy thinking of Watlington, after all I've seen—Watlington!"

He laughed quietly, and Felisi joined in. She was a born listener.

"Queer, isn't it? But there it is. Most impressionable age, I suppose—eighteen to twenty-two—Watlington! Rows and rows of little gray houses, all the same, and all full of the same sort of people." Again Jimmie shuddered. "Suburbans, that's what they call 'em—and the rain—a cold, dreary rain. It makes no difference. Every morning, alarm clock six-thirty—breakfast seven o'clock, porridge, egg, marmalade. Train eight o'clock—with a black bag. Underground—crowded—have to stand. Nine o'clock—sign book and climb on to a stool——"

Jimmie was still looking at Felisi, but he did not see her. He was listening to the rain, and his voice had become a dreary monotone.

Felisi was thoroughly enjoying it. It was another puzzle that only needed to be put together, and she was becoming an expert at the game.

"Stay on stool adding up figures... One o'clock lunch—one shilling—stool, stool, stool—six o'clock train—underground—crowded—have to stand—Watlington—Rain—dinner—read, talk, drivel—listen to someone torturing the piano—every day—all day, for days, and weeks, and months, and years!" Jimmie's voice rose in a harsh crescendo. "Are they mad? Or am I?" His eyes came to rest on Felisi in a challenging glare, and she knew that he saw her now.

"Queer, isn't it?" he said, with sudden quietness. "People are doing that now—over there. And they think it so fine that they want everybody to do it. They wanted me to do it. I did it for four years. Then I came home to Watlington one night and told them I wasn't going to do it any more. They said I was mad. Perhaps I was, but I didn't do it any more. I did something else, and I'm still doing something else. Listen to the rain! Watlington!" Jimmie's head sank down on to his arms. "Parsons's—zephyr—vests!" he muttered drowsily. "Cool—pool—rule——" He was asleep.

He was really still asleep when Felisi led him to his bed in the corner and left him with the mosquito curtain well tucked in under the mats. She fitted together the puzzle as she went down the red earth track leading to her aunt's grass house on the outskirts of Levuka, and she found it entertaining. The way of the white man had always interested her.

The next day a steamer came in, and she was busy. It was not until the following morning that she visited the factory, and was met by Jimmie in rather low spirits.

"What d'you think?" he demanded indignantly, while Felisi was setting fronds under the waterfall. "That little rat Parsons won't buy my work unless it's exclusive."

"Exclusive," mimicked Felisi.

"Yes, you know—unless he is the only man to have it. Swears that I promised that. Did I?"

"No," said Felisi.

"I should think not. It means I couldn't do anything for Boulton, and he was the first to publish me. I shall give up Parsons."

The ultimatum was delivered in all gravity. It meant that Jimmy would never again patronize Parsons for biscuits or matches or tobacco. Felisi felt quite sorry for the erring tradesman.

"Him pay you already," she suggested.

Jimmie hung his head.

"I know," he said, "and it's all gone. Most awkward. But perhaps Boulton will settle the matter. I have the very thing for next week—

"Why do we all return in time,
As though by magnet swiftly drawn,
To Ovalau's voluptuous clime,
Where——"

But Felisi heard no more. She was gazing spellbound past the upraised shapely hand to where the track breasted the hill. Her quick eyes had detected two white objects appearing over the crest. They were solar topees that rapidly evolved themselves into men—white men. One was short and plump and pink, the other tall and dark. Felisi had seen them both before, and knew one to be a well-known Levuka solicitor. The other she had seen coming down the gangway of the steamer the previous day. She remembered him partly because of his vague resemblance to Jimmie, and partly because he had brushed her aside when she offered the imitation pink coral.

They stood in full view now, pausing for breath, then the pink man turned and disappeared down the track, and the other came striding toward them.

The first thing that caused Jimmie to pause in the midst of a particularly flowing stanza was the expression of Felisi's face. He wheeled, quicker than Felisi could have dreamed it possible, and stood stone still, staring into the other's face, and not seeming to notice his outstretched hand.

"Jim," said the stranger, "don't you know me? Your brother, Charles."

Jimmie spoke, but it was like a mechanical figure speaking out of waxen lips:

"There's some mistake, I'm afraid."

"No, there's no mistake. You must know me, Jim. Why, man, I——"

Jimmie was swaying gently where he stood. His yellow face had turned a waxen gray. Then he crumpled forward into the stranger's arms.

There were strange happenings on the cliff for the next few hours. Felisi watched them, enthralled, whilst Jimmie lay in the grass, staring stonily up into the branches of a breadfruit tree, with a rapidly rising temperature.

The stranger performed miracles quietly and rapidly. The murmur of native voices came over the crest of the hill, but no one appeared. Every now and then the stranger vanished, too, to reappear dragging or carrying some bulky, queer-shaped bundle. A speckless white tent sprang into being, beds, a table, and chairs unfolded themselves from green parcels of miraculously small proportions, and by noon the transformation scene was complete. Jimmie, in a suit of striped pink-and-white pyjamas, lay on a camp-bed in the tent, tossing and muttering with fever. The stranger sat at the bedside, alternately watching him with his stern eyes, and dosing him with quinine.

Presently, when Jimmie had fallen into a doze, the stranger came outside and looked about him. His glance went like an arrow to the tumbledown house of weather boards and corrugated iron that had been Jimmie's home for so long. His hand went to his pocket and drew out a box of matches. His long legs carried him to the building in ten strides, and a moment later it was a crackling yellow flame. It burnt merrily until there was nothing left but glowing embers and a few blackened sheets of corrugated iron. These the stranger pried into a neat pile with the aid of a stick, and stood back to view, with every appearance of satisfaction, the damage he had wrought.

Then his glance fell on Felisi, squatting motionless in the factory. She shrank from him as he approached.

"Don't run away," he pleaded, in a wheedling voice. "Do you speak English, little girl?"

Felisi nodded sullenly.

"You do? Then let me make it quite clear. I have bought this piece of land. Do you understand?"

Again Felisi nodded.

"So now it belongs to me, and you mustn't come here."

"Jimmie belong you?" demanded Felisi, with a hint of truculence.

The stranger laughed softly.

"Yes," he said, "Jimmie belongs to me. He is my brother. He is very ill, and when he gets better I don't want anything to remind him of what he was."

"You make him ill!" flashed Felisi. "Him all right before."

"Yes," said the stranger, "Jimmie has to be ill before he will be well. Now run along, there's a good girl. What is this?" he added, pointing to the factory.

"Pink coral," said Felisi glibly. "You no want."

"No, I don't want any. But here"—the stranger produced a silver coin and held it out—"then you can run along."

Felisi rose slowly to her feet and turned toward the track. But she did not run, and she left the silver coin in the still outstretched hand of the astonished donor. She heard his short laugh as she went down the track, and her white teeth closed with a snap like an ivory trap.

There was now plenty of puzzle to put together, and Felisi entered into the game with a new zest. That evening she hid in a lantana bush a few yards from the tent, and, as well as witnessing a most interesting shadowgraph on the white canvas wall, heard the following:

"Jim, are you better?"

"Who the devil are you?"

"Your brother Charles. You must remember me. Have you forgotten Watlington—the old days?"

A short pause.

"Never heard of it. What do you want, anyway?"

"I want you, Jim."

"What for?"

"Because you're my brother."

"Haven't got a brother. Some mistake. Got a drink there?"

There was the shadowgraph of a hand going out and filling a glass very carefully from a bottle and a syphon.

"Call that a drink?"

"We're going to fight it out, Jim, up here alone. A little less each time; you won't notice it."

"What's all this?"

"Pyjamas. Don't they feel nice and cool and—and clean? Lie still, Jim; you're not strong yet, you know."

"If I didn't know it, I'd choke you, you—you supercilious, domineering——"

"Ah, the same old Jim!"

"Get out of here! Who gave you permission to come on to my—my property, and——"

"It was never your property, Jim. They let you live here, but it's not yours. It's mine now—I've bought it."

A long silence, then—

"It's no good, Jim. Be reasonable. I don't want much—only that you'll come back with me and live like a civilized human being. You owe it to us."

"I owe nothing to any one except Parsons."

"You owe it to us. I came fifteen thousand miles to find you, to bring you back. I left my wife and two children for that, and I shall not return until you come with me. Why, just now, in your fever, you mentioned Watlington over and over again. When you first came to Levuka, you signed your name in the hotel register; there it is, in your own handwriting—J. Crothers. There aren't many Crotherses, you know, Jim. What's the use of pretending? It isn't as if you left anything to be ashamed of in Watlington. You just went and never came back, that's all. It was a tremendous business to trace you, but I did it. The world's very small, really. Won't you even admit——"

"Never heard of you. Get out!"

"Very well. You know me, and I know you. I shall stay with you until you do come back. My wife and children can wait."

There was the shadowgraph, slightly marred by the billowing tent wall, of an attenuated figure rearing itself up and falling upon something out of the range of vision. There were the sounds of a brief struggle, the indefinite picture of something being gently laid down, and silence.

"You always hated me, didn't you, Jim?" a voice droned on presently. "I think you hated all of us; I could never make out why."

"For Heaven's sake, go away and leave me in peace!" It was the cry of a tortured soul. "What harm have I done any one—any one—to be interfered with like this?"

"You have only harmed yourself, Jim."

"Then what business is it of yours to—to——"

"It is the business of every brother——"

"But I tell you it's a mistake! I have no brother. Do you want to drive me mad?"

"No; but I must finish, now that I have begun. You want to know why I came all this way, now, to find you and bring you back?"

"I don't! I never said I did. I——"

"Well, Uncle Fred died five years ago." The droning voice became more hesitant. "He left some money to be equally divided between us. I spent it all—for the children's sake." The voice stopped. It had evidently been a tremendous effort to say as much. But there was no answer, and it went on: "Then I began to think about you, Jim. You became a short of ghost to haunt me. I just had to tell you what I'd done. I'm built like that, as you know. I just had to find out where you were—what you were doing. You might have been out in the world starving, and there was I in Watlington. I had wife and children, but your ghost rose up between them and me. I left them, and swore I would not come back until I brought you with me. You might have been ill—wanted help for years. I hunted for you and found you—like this. We'll fight it out together, Jim, up here alone."

There were indistinct mumblings.

Felisi listened intently, but all she could catch was something that sounded like "vest—blest—west——"

Jimmie was in the grip of fever again.

For three days this went on, and when Felisi saw him one day sitting outside the tent, he had changed from a happy child into a miserable old man.

It took Felisi some time to come to a decision, but when once it had been arrived at, the result was usually pretty thorough.

Shortly after midnight she crawled out from the lantana bush and pushed the tent wall so that it also pushed Jimmie, at the same time making a queer little noise of her own. There was an agonizing pause, then an elongated form crawled from the tent, seized her by the hand, and stumbled after her into the bush.

They progressed in this fashion—Jimmie called it running—for perhaps an hour, before he was allowed to sink on to the musty mats of a disused hut deep in the recesses of the bush. He lay as one dead, until Felisi produced from somewhere—with the air of a conjurer producing rabbits from a hat—a bottle of amber liquid. Then Jimmie sat up.

"Felisi, you're a gem," he said, with something of his old-time spirit.

"You all right," chirped the conjurer. "Him go away plenty quick."

But Jimmie shook his head.

"You don't know my brother Charles," he said. "Watlington!" And he buried his face in his hands and sobbed like the child he was.

"You all right, you all right," soothed Felisi, but it was of no avail. Jimmie was very weak, and the amber liquid had gone to his head.

"He's right—I always did hate him!" he said. "We were so different, somehow, and he always dominated me. He can dominate me now, after all these years. It's queer, but there it is. I feel all crumpled up when he's about. But I won't go back. He's too late. Any one would be too late now. I was happy. I wasn't doing anybody any harm. And I won't go back! I'd kill myself first!"

Felisi crept close.

"Why you no kill him?" she said.

Jimmie regarded her with horror-struck eyes.

"Me kill him," she added very quietly.

"No, you mustn't do that. You shan't do that. I won't let you do that." Jimmie had seized her hand as though it held a dagger upraised. "No!" Jimmie suddenly became dignified. "I will speak to him as a man, not as—as the worm he thinks me. After all, I have the law. But the law is queer; it does strange things—it might uphold him. No, I shall say: 'Pardon me, I haven't the pleasure of your acquaintance.'" Jimmie's manner was that of Parsons's store when he took a biscuit. "I shall say——But then there are his wife and children. He has said that he won't go back without me, and he means it. Charles always meant what he said. Different to me—poles apart. Nevertheless, my life is my own, and I shall say to him 'Go!' like that, I shall——"

When, however, about ten minutes later, there was the sound of running feet, followed by the appearance of the panting stranger, Jimmie said nothing of the sort. In a surprisingly short space of time he was back in the tent and in bed, with a string tied securely round his waist at one end, and round the stranger's wrist at the other.

The puzzle became more and more involved, but Felisi struggled with it manfully.

Jimmie became very docile after that ignominious night of freedom, but the string was still in use, and a few nights later the stranger woke with a start. He pulled on the string gently, and it came toward him over the ground. He got up and examined Jimmie's bed. It was empty. He went outside and watched the sun climb out of the sea.

What a nuisance that fellow was! No, it was that infernal native girl. It would be necessary, after all, then, to have recourse to the police.

The stranger turned wearily from the sea, and was entering the tent, when his glance happened on a huddled heap of cheap patterned calico close to the waterfall. It was the "infernal native girl." She took no heed of his approach, and when he raised her head, silent tears were streaming down her face.

"Where is he?" demanded the stranger peremptorily.

Felisi did not answer. She merely rocked gently from side to side, kneeling in the grass.

"Where is he?" repeated the stranger, with quiet insistence but with an anxious look in his eyes.

Felisi pointed to the cliff.

"You kill him," she said.

The stranger strode to the edge and looked over. Below, the blue waters of the Pacific lashed themselves into white fury against the needles of volcanic rock at the foot of the cliff. Halfway down, where it was impossible for a goat to have found foothold, there was a little bush, and fluttering from it a tattered strip of pink-and-white flannel.

There was no mistaking it for anything but a shred of Jimmie's wonderful pyjamas.

The stranger looked out over the sea. The white wings of a hurricane bird fanned his face, and he moved. He took Felisi by the shoulders and shook her.

"You lie!" he said fiercely. "Where is he?"

"You kill him!" sobbed Felisi, and he could get nothing else out of her.

 

The very best of search parties scoured the little island of Ovalau for a fortnight. Then the stranger went home in a big steamer.

Felisi and Jimmie watched it, from the cliff, slowly dissolving into the heat haze. Then the work of the factory was resumed, and Jimmie sat in his favourite seat, declaiming to the sunshine—

"Thrice blessed Isle of Ovalau,
Thou art my mother, father, friend

... trow, plow, cow, now, how..."