t is why the company selects only courageous and
intrepid men for this particular station. They last no more than a year
or so, when the wreckage of them is shipped back to Australia, or the
remains of them are buried in the sand across on the windward side of
the islet. Johnny Bassett, almost the legendary hero of Goboto, broke
all records. He was a remittance man with a remarkable constitution,
and he lasted seven years. His dying request was duly observed by his
clerks, who pickled him in a cask of trade-rum (paid for out of
their own salaries) and shipped him back to his people in England.
Nevertheless, at Goboto, they tried to be gentlemen. For that matter,
though something was wrong with them, they were gentlemen, and had been
gentlemen. That was why the great unwritten rule of Goboto was that
visitors should put on pants and shoes. Breech-clouts, lava-lavas, and
bare legs were not tolerated. When Captain Jensen, the wildest of the
Blackbirders though descended from old New York Knickerbocker stock,
surged in, clad in loin-cloth, undershirt, two belted revolvers and
a sheath-knife, he was stopped at the beach. This was in the days of
Johnny Bassett, ever a stickler in matters of etiquette. Captain Jensen
stood up in the sternsheets of his whaleboat and denied the existence of
pants on his schooner. Also, he affirmed his intention of coming ashore.
They of Goboto nursed him back to health from a bullet-hole through his
shoulder, and in addition handsomely begged his pardon, for no pants
had they found on his schooner. And finally, on the first day he sat up,
Johnny Bassett kindly but firmly assisted his guest into a pair of pants
of his own. This was the great precedent. In all the succeeding years it
had never been violated. White men and pants were undivorce-able. Only
niggers ran naked. Pants constituted caste.

II

On this night things were, with one exception, in nowise different from
any other night. Seven of them, with glimmering eyes and steady legs,
had capped a day of Scotch with swivel-sticked cocktails and sat down to
dinner. Jacketed, trousered, and shod, they were: Jerry McMurtrey, the
manager; Eddy Little and Jack Andrews, clerks; Captain Stapler, of the
recruiting ketch _Merry_; Darby Shryleton, planter from Tito-Ito; Peter
Gee, a half-caste Chinese pearl-buyer who ranged from Ceylon to the
Paumotus, and Alfred Deacon, a visitor who had stopped off from the last
steamer. At first wine was ser