d steamer
lying well out, like a painted ship on a painted sea; painted in crude
colours, without shadows, without feeling, with brutal precision.

"You had better hurry up if you don't want to be left behind."

But the Chinaman did not move.

"We stop," he declared. Heyst looked down at him for the first time.

"You want to stop here?"

"Yes."

"What were you? What was your work here?"

"Mess-loom boy."

"Do you want to stay with me here as my boy?" inquired Heyst, surprised.

The Chinaman unexpectedly put on a deprecatory expression, and said,
after a marked pause:

"Can do."

"You needn't," said Heyst, "unless you like. I propose to stay on
here--it may be for a very long time. I have no power to make you go if
you wish to remain, but I don't see why you should."

"Catchee one piecee wife," remarked Wang unemotionally, and marched off,
turning his back on the wharf and the great world beyond, represented by
the steamer waiting for her boats.

Heyst learned presently that Wang had persuaded one of the women of
Alfuro village, on the west shore of the island, beyond the central
ridge, to come over to live with him in a remote part of the company's
clearing. It was a curious case, inasmuch as the Alfuros, having been
frightened by the sudden invasion of Chinamen, had blocked the path over
the ridge by felling a few trees, and had kept strictly on their own
side. The coolies, as a body, mistrusting the manifest mildness of these
harmless fisher-folk, had kept to their lines, without attempting to
cross the island. Wang was the brilliant exception. He must have been
uncommonly fascinating, in a way that was not apparent to Heyst, or else
uncommonly persuasive. The woman's services to Heyst were limited to
the fact that she had anchored Wang to the spot by her charms, which
remained unknown to the white man, because she never came near the
houses. The couple lived at the edge of the forest, and she could
sometimes be seen gazing towards the bungalow shading her eyes with her
hand. Even from a distance she appeared to be a shy, wild creature,
and Heyst, anxious not to try her primitive nerves unduly, scrupulously
avoided that side of the clearing in his strolls.

The day--or rather the first night--after his hermit life began, he was
aware of vague sounds of revelry in that direction. Emboldened by the
departure of the invading strangers, some Alfuros, the woman's friends
and relations, had ventured over t