vote himself to his sisters and "live clean." And he had kept his vow,
though for many years he had lived as trader, mate, or supercargo, among
people and in places where loose living was customary with white men,
and where any departure from the general practice was looked upon
with either contemptuous pity or open scorn. Yet no one, not even the
roughest and most dissolute beachcomber in the two Pacifics, would
have dared to "chaff" Harvey Carr upon his eccentricity, for he had an
unpleasant manner when aroused which meant danger to the man who was so
wanting in judgment. Yet some men _had_ "chaffed" him, and found out to
their cost that they had picked upon the wrong sort of man; for if he
was slow with his tongue he was quick with his hands, and knew how to
use them in a manner which had given intense pleasure to numerous gentry
who, in South Sea ports, delight to witness a "mill" in default of being
able to take part in it themselves.

And so the years had slipped by with Harvey Carr, wandering from one
island to another either as trader or seaman. Of such money as he made
he sent the greater portion to his sisters in the Colonies, retaining
only enough for himself to enable him to live decently. He was not an
ascetic, he drank fairly with his rough companions, gambled occasionally
in a moderate manner with them, swore when the exigences of seafaring
life demanded it, but no one had ever heard his name coupled with that
of a woman, white or brown, though he was essentially a favourite with
the latter; for at the end of fifteen years' experience in the South
Seas, from Easter Island to the far Bonins, he was one of the few white
men who thoroughly understood the character and disposition of the
various peoples among whom he had lived. Had he been a man of education
his knowledge of native languages, thought and mode of life generally,
might have brought him some money, fame, and distinction in the world
beyond, but he took no thought of such things; for to him the world
beyond was an unknown quantity, only associated in his mind with his
sisters, who had sometimes talked to him of their hopes and aspirations.
They would, when he had made plenty of money, go to England, to France,
to Italy. They would, with him, see the quaint old church on the sands
of Devon where their mother, and her mother too, had been christened so
long, long ago. And Harvey had only shaken his head and smiled. They,
he said, might go, but he ha