f
settlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty
miles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can
be seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep
hills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep
fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the
valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance from the
settlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two, and with the
two halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the full, the
moon, as seen from the open space in front of Jim's house (he had a very
fine house in the native style when I visited him), rose exactly behind
these hills, its diffused light at first throwing the two masses into
intensely black relief, and then the nearly perfect disc, glowing
ruddily, appeared, gliding upwards between the sides of the chasm, till
it floated away above the summits, as if escaping from a yawning grave
in gentle triumph. "Wonderful effect," said Jim by my side. "Worth
seeing. Is it not?"

'And this question was put with a note of personal pride that made me
smile, as though he had had a hand in regulating that unique spectacle.
He had regulated so many things in Patusan--things that would have
appeared as much beyond his control as the motions of the moon and the
stars.

'It was inconceivable. That was the distinctive quality of the part into
which Stein and I had tumbled him unwittingly, with no other notion than
to get him out of the way; out of his own way, be it understood. That
was our main purpose, though, I own, I might have had another motive
which had influenced me a little. I was about to go home for a time;
and it may be I desired, more than I was aware of myself, to dispose of
him--to dispose of him, you understand--before I left. I was going home,
and he had come to me from there, with his miserable trouble and his
shadowy claim, like a man panting under a burden in a mist. I cannot
say I had ever seen him distinctly--not even to this day, after I had
my last view of him; but it seemed to me that the less I understood
the more I was bound to him in the name of that doubt which is the
inseparable part of our knowledge. I did not know so much more about
myself. And then, I repeat, I was going home--to that home distant
enough for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the
humblest of us has the right to sit. We wander