in bed. You ought to have been up before dawn like me. Lazy
beggar."

He threw himself heavily into his chair and wiped his face with a large
bandana.

"By heaven, I've got a thirst."

He turned to the policeman who stood at the door, a picturesque figure
in his white jacket and _lava-lava_, the loin cloth of the Samoan, and
told him to bring _kava_. The _kava_ bowl stood on the floor in the
corner of the room, and the policeman filled a half coconut shell and
brought it to Walker. He poured a few drops on the ground, murmured the
customary words to the company, and drank with relish. Then he told the
policeman to serve the waiting natives, and the shell was handed to each
one in order of birth or importance and emptied with the same
ceremonies.

Then he set about the day's work. He was a little man, considerably less
than of middle height, and enormously stout; he had a large, fleshy
face, clean-shaven, with the cheeks hanging on each side in great
dew-laps, and three vast chins; his small features were all dissolved in
fat; and, but for a crescent of white hair at the back of his head, he
was completely bald. He reminded you of Mr Pickwick. He was grotesque, a
figure of fun, and yet, strangely enough, not without dignity. His blue
eyes, behind large gold-rimmed spectacles, were shrewd and vivacious,
and there was a great deal of determination in his face. He was sixty,
but his native vitality triumphed over advancing years. Notwithstanding
his corpulence his movements were quick, and he walked with a heavy,
resolute tread as though he sought to impress his weight upon the earth.
He spoke in a loud, gruff voice.

It was two years now since Mackintosh had been appointed Walker's
assistant. Walker, who had been for a quarter of a century administrator
of Talua, one of the larger islands in the Samoan group, was a man known
in person or by report through the length and breadth of the South Seas;
and it was with lively curiosity that Mackintosh looked forward to his
first meeting with him. For one reason or another he stayed a couple of
weeks at Apia before he took up his post and both at Chaplin's hotel and
at the English club he heard innumerable stories about the
administrator. He thought now with irony of his interest in them. Since
then he had heard them a hundred times from Walker himself. Walker knew
that he was a character, and, proud of his reputation, deliberately
acted up to it. He was jealous of his "leg