Englishman--Miss Stanleigh's
interest in the quest was guardedly withheld--and the trail had led him
a pretty chase around the world until some clue, which I never clearly
understood, brought them to Port Charlotte. The major's immediate
objective was an eccentric chap named Leavitt who had marooned himself
in Muloa. The island offered an ideal retreat for one bent on shunning
his own kind, if he did not object to the close proximity of a restive
volcano. Clearly, Leavitt did not. He had a scientific interest in the
phenomena exhibited by volcanic regions and was versed in geological
lore, but the rumors about Leavitt--practically no one ever visited
Muloa--did not stop at that. And, as Major Stanleigh and I were to
discover, the fellow seemed to have developed a genuine affection for
Lakalatcha, as the smoking cone was called by the natives of the
adjoining islands. From long association he had come to know its whims
and moods as one comes to know those of a petulant woman one lives with.
It was a bizarre and preposterous intimacy, in which Leavitt seemed to
find a wholly acceptable substitute for human society, and there was
something repellant about the man's eccentricity. He had various names
for the smoking cone that towered a mile or more above his head: "Old
Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and
irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The
Single-breasted Virgin"--these last, however, always in the musical
Malay equivalent. He had no end of names--romantic, splenetic, of
opprobrium, or outright endearment--to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's
varying moods. In one respect they puzzled me--they were of conflicting
genders, some feminine and some masculine, as if in Leavitt's
loose-frayed imagination the mountain that beguiled his days and
disturbed his nights were hermaphroditic.

Leavitt as a source of information regarding the missing Farquharson
seemed preposterous when one reflected how out of touch with the world
he had been, but, to my astonishment, Major Stanleigh's clue was right,
for he had at last stumbled upon a man who had known Farquharson well
and who was voluminous about him--quite willingly so. With the _Sylph_
at anchor, we lay off Muloa for three nights, and Leavitt gave us our
fill of Farquharson, along with innumerable digressions about volcanoes,
neoplatonism, the Single Tax, and what not. There was no keeping Leavitt
to a coherent narrative