around her
shoulders so that the centipede could not fall inside her bodice. With
the other hand--the right--he reached into her hair, caught the repulsive
abomination as near as he was able by the nape of the neck, and held it
tightly between thumb and forefinger as he withdrew it from her hair. It
was as horrible and heroic a sight as man could wish to see. It made my
flesh crawl. The centipede, seven inches of squirming legs, writhed and
twisted and dashed itself about his hand, the body twining around the
fingers and the legs digging into the skin and scratching as the beast
endeavoured to free itself. It bit him twice--I saw it--though he
assured the ladies that he was not harmed as he dropped it upon the walk
and stamped it into the gravel. But I saw him in the surgery five
minutes afterwards, with Doctor Goodhue scarifying the wounds and
injecting permanganate of potash. The next morning Kersdale's arm was as
big as a barrel, and it was three weeks before the swelling went down.

All of which has nothing to do with my story, but which I could not avoid
giving in order to show that Jack Kersdale was anything but a coward. It
was the cleanest exhibition of grit I have ever seen. He never turned a
hair. The smile never left his lips. And he dived with thumb and
forefinger into Dottie Fairchild's hair as gaily as if it had been a box
of salted almonds. Yet that was the man I was destined to see stricken
with a fear a thousand times more hideous even than the fear that was
mine when I saw that writhing abomination in Dottie Fairchild's hair,
dangling over her eyes and the trap of her bodice.

I was interested in leprosy, and upon that, as upon every other island
subject, Kersdale had encyclopedic knowledge. In fact, leprosy was one
of his hobbies. He was an ardent defender of the settlement at Molokai,
where all the island lepers were segregated. There was much talk and
feeling among the natives, fanned by the demagogues, concerning the
cruelties of Molokai, where men and women, not alone banished from
friends and family, were compelled to live in perpetual imprisonment
until they died. There were no reprieves, no commutations of sentences.
"Abandon hope" was written over the portal of Molokai.

"I tell you they are happy there," Kersdale insisted. "And they are
infinitely better off than their friends and relatives outside who have
nothing the matter with them. The horrors of Molokai are all poppyc