expected to know what went on in the rest of
the string--with one leaky patrol-boat to ride those seas? Sometimes
there were fights down by the docks; strangers got arrested and were
mysteriously pardoned out; there were always a good many people in the
landscape who had had too much square-face. We were very far away from
everything, and in spite of all these drawbacks we were happy, because
the climate was, most of the year, unexceptionable. When you recall what
most civilized climates are like, "unexceptionable," that cold and
formal word, may well take your breath away. Lest any one should suspect
me of blackbirding or gin-selling, I will say at once that I had come to
Naapu by accident and that I stayed because, for reasons that I will not
go into here, I liked it. I lived in a tiny bungalow with an ex-ship's
cook whom I called Joe, and several thousand cockroaches. I had hired
Joe to cook for me, but his chief duty soon became to keep the
cockroaches out of my bedroom. As a matter of fact, I usually dined at
Dubois's hotel or at some private house.

Why so idle a person as I should have looked down--as I did, from the
first--on Follet, I cannot explain. The money I lived on was certainly
not of my own making. But, strictly speaking, I could have gone home if
I had chosen, and I more than suspected that Follet could not have.
Follet was not enamoured of Naapu, and talked grandiloquently of
Melbourne and Batavia and Hong-Kong. He continued, however, to be a
resident of the island, and none of his projects of removal to a better
place ever went beyond mere frothy talk. He lived at Dubois's, but spent
much of his time with the aforesaid magnates. He had an incorruptible
manner; some grace that had been bred in him early never forsook him,
and the ladies of Naapu liked him. Even good Madame Mauer, who squinted,
squinted more painfully at Follet than at any one else. But his idleness
was beginning to tell on him; occasionally he had moody fits, and there
were times when he broke out and ran amuck among beach-combers and tipsy
natives along the water-front. More than once, Ching Po sought him out
and fetched him home.

My first intimation of trouble came from Stires. I had nothing to do
with this particular Yankee in the way of business, but I lingered
occasionally by his door in the cool of the afternoon, just to feed my
eyes on his brawn and my ears on his homely and pleasant nasality.
Stires's eyes were that disconc