les, and his deep-sunk eyes. From his thin
legs, fragile-looking as windstraws, the bones of which were sheathed in
withered skin with apparently no muscle padding in between--from such
frail stems sprouted the torso of a fat man. The huge and protuberant
stomach was amply supported by wide and massive hips, and the shoulders
were broad as those of a Hercules. But, beheld sidewise, there was no
depth to those shoulders and the top of the chest. Almost, at that part
of his anatomy, he seemed builded in two dimensions. Thin his arms were
as his legs, and, as Michael first beheld him, he had all the seeming of
a big-bellied black spider.

He proceeded to dress, a matter of moments, slipping into duck trousers
and blouse, dirty and frayed from long usage. Two fingers of his left
hand were doubled into a permanent bend, and, to an expert, would have
advertised that he was a leper. Although he belonged to Dag Daughtry
just as much as if the steward possessed a chattel bill of sale of him,
his owner did not know that his anaesthetic twist of ravaged nerves
tokened the dread disease.

The manner of the ownership was simple. At King William Island, in the
Admiralties, Kwaque had made, in the parlance of the South Pacific, a
pier-head jump. So to speak, leprosy and all, he had jumped into Dag
Daughtry's arms. Strolling along the native runways in the fringe of
jungle just beyond the beach, as was his custom, to see whatever he might
pick up, the steward had picked up Kwaque. And he had picked him up in
extremity.

Pursued by two very active young men armed with fire-hardened spears,
tottering along with incredible swiftness on his two spindle legs, Kwaque
had fallen exhausted at Daughtry's feet and looked up at him with the
beseeching eyes of a deer fleeing from the hounds. Daughtry had inquired
into the matter, and the inquiry was violent; for he had a wholesome fear
of germs and bacilli, and when the two active young men tried to run him
through with their filth-corroded spears, he caught the spear of one
young man under his arm and put the other young man to sleep with a left
hook to the jaw. A moment later the young man whose spear he held had
joined the other in slumber.

The elderly steward was not satisfied with the mere spears. While the
rescued Kwaque continued to moan and slubber thankfulness at his feet, he
proceeded to strip them that were naked. Nothing they wore in the way of
clothing, but from ar