.

"Give me another drink. I've got something to say."

This time Mackintosh gave him his whisky neat. Walker collected his
strength in a final effort of will.

"Don't make a fuss about this. In 'ninety-five when there were troubles
white men were killed, and the fleet came and shelled the villages. A
lot of people were killed who'd had nothing to do with it. They're
damned fools at Apia. If they make a fuss they'll only punish the wrong
people. I don't want anyone punished."

He paused for a while to rest.

"You must say it was an accident. No one's to blame. Promise me that."

"I'll do anything you like," whispered Mackintosh.

"Good chap. One of the best. They're children. I'm their father. A
father don't let his children get into trouble if he can help it."

A ghost of a chuckle came out of his throat. It was astonishingly weird
and ghastly.

"You're a religious chap, Mac. What's that about forgiving them? You
know."

For a while Mackintosh did not answer. His lips trembled.

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do?"

"That's right. Forgive them. I've loved them, you know, always loved
them."

He sighed. His lips faintly moved, and now Mackintosh had to put his
ears quite close to them in order to hear.

"Hold my hand," he said.

Mackintosh gave a gasp. His heart seemed wrenched. He took the old man's
hand, so cold and weak, a coarse, rough hand, and held it in his own.
And thus he sat until he nearly started out of his seat, for the silence
was suddenly broken by a long rattle. It was terrible and unearthly.
Walker was dead. Then the natives broke out with loud cries. The tears
ran down their faces, and they beat their breasts.

Mackintosh disengaged his hand from the dead man's, and staggering like
one drunk with sleep he went out of the room. He went to the locked
drawer in his writing-desk and took out the revolver. He walked down to
the sea and walked into the lagoon; he waded out cautiously, so that he
should not trip against a coral rock, till the water came to his
arm-pits. Then he put a bullet through his head.

An hour later half a dozen slim brown sharks were splashing and
struggling at the spot where he fell.

III

_The Fall of Edward Barnard_

Bateman Hunter slept badly. For a fortnight on the boat that brought him
from Tahiti to San Francisco he had been thinking of the story he had to
tell, and for three days on the train he had repeated to himself the
words in