rsion: a
bat-eared clerk from the Consulate office, a broken engineer, a benzoin
trader looking professionally neat and antiseptic, and two or three
loafers looking considerably less so--but all entire gentlemen,
unpatched, and all expectant of Silva's lead and grateful for it.

"Well, well. A new specimen, then." The captain was pleased to assume a
scientific interest as he propped himself on his cue and waved aside a
wreath of cigarette smoke. "And a blasted poor specimen at that, I'd
say.... Now which tribe would you take him to be, just as he stands?"

Captain Silva had a reputation of the kind invaluable to a humorist; it
assured him an audience. Also, he had that rare immunity in tropic heats
which makes any man formidable, and even sinister. An Anglo-Portuguese
strain was supposed to account for him--for his color, for his superior
air, and for various ventures of his not easy to define since piracy
went out of date. Perhaps it did. But the gleam in his eye, a certain
evil quickening with which he studied the unfortunate Merry, might have
argued a darker origin.

"By God! A specimen for true!" he breathed, incredulous. "Zimballo," he
added in his drawl, slow and acid, "you're getting infernally damned
careless. Since when has this front room been free to any greasy lascar
that comes along?"

The fat man went a rich shade of magenta.

"I can' help if he shoves in on me! 'Ow _can_ I help?"

"He wouldn't shove in by chance--on his nerve."

"Tha's it! Tha's jus' what he done, sir. Nerve! He come after drink, and
you know what he brings along with him--to buy off me? Eh--what?"
Zimballo blew out his wrath. "Twenty-five Batavia cents!... Besides a
lid'l fool parrot to do juggle-trick work!"

"Drink? Ah-ha. Likely enough too.... But how does he manage to call for
'em? Can he talk anything human, at least?"

And here, having confirmed his perception of the victim, Silva drove
home the attack.

"Hey, you fella yonder. Bugis, Sula man, sea gypsy--whichever's your
misbegotten stripe--suppose you speak'um. What pidgin belong you? Where
you hail from, anyway?"

Mr. Merry stood there before them, dazed and helpless. In one hand he
held his rejected coin; in the other the lorikeet's cage and a few
trifles wrapped with a kerchief. He knew what these people meant. He was
not so far gone as to miss what mockery was being put upon him in savage
contempt, and how it measured the distance he had traveled and the depth
t