a penitent, conscious at least of
accumulated hatreds, and his memory charged with images of violence and
blood, he capitulates to the Old Men, fuddles himself with opium, and
sits among his guards in dreadful expectation. The same cowardice that
put into his hand the knife of the assassin deprives him of the sceptre
of a king.

A tale that I was told, a trifling incident that fell in my observation,
depict him in his two capacities. A chief in Little Makin asked, in an
hour of lightness, "Who is Kaeia?" A bird carried the saying; and
Nakaeia placed the matter in the hands of a committee of three. Mr.
Corpse was chairman; the second commissioner died before my arrival; the
third was yet alive and green, and presented so venerable an appearance
that we gave him the name of Abou ben Adhem. Mr. Corpse was troubled
with a scruple; the man from Little Makin was his adopted brother; in
such a case it was not very delicate to appear at all, to strike the
blow (which it seems was otherwise expected of him) would be worse than
awkward. "I will strike the blow," said the venerable Abou; and Mr.
Corpse (surely with a sigh) accepted the compromise. The quarry was
decoyed into the bush; he was set carrying a log; and while his arms
were raised Abou ripped up his belly at a blow. Justice being thus done,
the commission, in a childish horror, turned to flee. But their victim
recalled them to his side. "You need not run away now," he said. "You
have done this thing to me. Stay." He was some twenty minutes dying, and
his murderers sat with him the while: a scene for Shakespeare. All the
stages of a violent death, the blood, the failing voice, the decomposing
features, the changed hue, are thus present in the memory of Mr. Corpse;
and since he studied them in the brother he betrayed, he has some reason
to reflect on the possibilities of treachery. I was never more sure of
anything than the tragic quality of the king's thoughts; and yet I had
but the one sight of him at unawares. I had once an errand for his ear.
It was once more the hour of the siesta; but there were loiterers
abroad, and these directed us to a closed house on the bank of the canal
where Tebureimoa lay unguarded. We entered without ceremony, being in
some haste. He lay on the floor upon a bed of mats, reading in his
Gilbert Island Bible with compunction. On our sudden entrance the
unwieldy man reared himself half-sitting so that the Bible rolled on the
floor, stared on u