eral-times
millionaire. He was a sugar-king, a coffee planter, a rubber pioneer, a
cattle rancher, and a promoter of three out of every four new enterprises
launched in the islands. He was a society man, a club man, a yachtsman,
a bachelor, and withal as handsome a man as was ever doted upon by mammas
with marriageable daughters. Incidentally, he had finished his education
at Yale, and his head was crammed fuller with vital statistics and
scholarly information concerning Hawaii Nei than any other islander I
ever encountered. He turned off an immense amount of work, and he sang
and danced and put flowers in his hair as immensely as any of the idlers.
He had grit, and had fought two duels--both, political--when he was no
more than a raw youth essaying his first adventures in politics. In
fact, he played a most creditable and courageous part in the last
revolution, when the native dynasty was overthrown; and he could not have
been over sixteen at the time. I am pointing out that he was no coward,
in order that you may appreciate what happens later on. I've seen him in
the breaking yard at the Haleakala Ranch, conquering a four-year-old
brute that for two years had defied the pick of Von Tempsky's cow-boys.
And I must tell of one other thing. It was down in Kona,--or up, rather,
for the Kona people scorn to live at less than a thousand feet elevation.
We were all on the _lanai_ of Doctor Goodhue's bungalow. I was talking
with Dottie Fairchild when it happened. A big centipede--it was seven
inches, for we measured it afterwards--fell from the rafters overhead
squarely into her coiffure. I confess, the hideousness of it paralysed
me. I couldn't move. My mind refused to work. There, within two feet
of me, the ugly venomous devil was writhing in her hair. It threatened
at any moment to fall down upon her exposed shoulders--we had just come
out from dinner.

"What is it?" she asked, starting to raise her hand to her head.

"Don't!" I cried. "Don't!"

"But what is it?" she insisted, growing frightened by the fright she read
in my eyes and on my stammering lips.

My exclamation attracted Kersdale's attention. He glanced our way
carelessly, but in that glance took in everything. He came over to us,
but without haste.

"Please don't move, Dottie," he said quietly.

He never hesitated, nor did he hurry and make a bungle of it.

"Allow me," he said.

And with one hand he caught her scarf and drew it tightly