beneath the dour Puritanism that had lapped him in its armour
there still stirred the power of wonder and surprise that has so often
through the ages changed Puritans to poets. That glimpse of Hayti
would remain with him, he thought, yet within the hour he was striving
desperately to hold it. For soon the ruffle of the breeze died from
off the sea, and it became gray glass through which the anchor sank
almost without a sound and was lost.

"Sweet place, isn't it, Mr. Simpson?" said Bunsen, the purser, pausing
on his way to the gangway.

"So that," Simpson rejoined slowly--and because it was a port of his
desire his voice shook on the words--"is Port au Prince!"

"That," Bunsen spat into the sea, "is Port au Prince."

He moved away. A dirty little launch full of uniforms was coming
alongside. Until the yellow flag--a polite symbol in that port--should
be hauled down Simpson would be left alone. The uniforms had climbed
to the deck and were chattering in a bastard patois behind him; now
and then the smell of the town struck across the smells of the sea and
the bush like the flick of a snake's tail. Simpson covered his eyes
for a moment, and immediately the vision of the island as he had seen
it at dawn swam in his mind. But he could not keep his eyes forever
shut--there was the necessity of living and of doing his work in the
world to be remembered always. He removed his hand. A bumboat was made
fast below the well of the deck, and a boy with an obscenely twisted
body and a twisted black face was selling pineapples to the sailors.
Simpson watched him for a while, and because his education had been
far too closely specialized he quoted the inevitable:

"Where every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile"

The verse uplifted him unreasonably. He went below to pack his
baggage. He said good-bye to the officers, painfully conscious that
they were grinning behind his back, and was rowed ashore by the
deformed boy.

The boy said something in abominable French. He repeated it--Simpson
guessed at its meaning.

"I shall stay a long time," he answered in the same language. "I am a
minister of the gospel--a missionary."

The cripple, bent revoltingly over his oar, suddenly broke out into
laughter, soulless, without meaning. Simpson, stung sharply in his
stiff-necked pride, sprang up and took one step forward, his fist
raised. The boy dropped the oars and writhed to starboard, his neck
askew at an eldritch angle, his