im, or an
American took 'is nytive wife aw'y. 'E packs a revolver."

Everywhere the mountain-side was terraced, and planted in cocoanuts,
breadfruits, bananas, flowers, and other plants, more than two
thousand growths. Darling's toil had been great, and my heart bled
at the memory of his standing on the piling as we steamed away. He
had intended to have a colony, with bare nature-worshipers from all
over the world. He had written articles in magazines, and tourists
and authors had celebrated him in their stories. A score of needy
health-seekers had arrived in Papeete and joined him, but could not
survive his rigid diet and work. He had talked much of Eves, white,
in the Eden, but none had offered.

On a platform fifteen hundred feet above the sea Darling had built a
frame of beams, boards, and branches, with bunks and seats, much like
a woodcutter's temporary shelter in the mountains, a mere lean-to. The
view was stupendous, with the sea, the harbor, Moorea, and Papeete
hardly seen in the foliage. He had thought his work in life to be
peopling these hills with big families of nature children and the
spread of socialism and reformed spelling.

His dream was transient. He had been treated with contempt, and had
been driven from his garden, as had his first father, and without an
Eve or a serpent. The whiskered Frenchman had bought Eden for a song,
and had made it taboo to all.

We shouted in vain for the Frenchman, so we searched the premises. The
boxer was afraid that after we left he might roll a rock down our trail
because of our breaking his taboo. We found the spring from which
he drank, and a pool dug by Darling for bathing, now only a mass of
vegetation. Evidently the present tenant was not an ablutionist.

"There's a beastly German down on that next level," remarked the
Christchurch Kid. "'E 'ates this Frenchman. Now they don't speak,
but they sent warnin' to each other o' trouble. The frog carries the
revolver for the sauer-kraut. Some day they'll kill each other right
'ere. They're both 'ermits, and 'ermits are terrible when they get
excited."

It was almost a straight drop to the German's, a small promontory, with
an acre of land, a platform raised eight feet on poles for a roof, and
under it a berth. A chest held his belongings. He lived on the fruit
he raised and the fish he caught in the sea, to which he went every
day. He tried to keep chickens, but the mountain rats, of which Darling
had trapped mo