the girl were a good few miles away, having gone in
the night on board one of the Tesman schooners bound to the eastward.
This was known afterwards from the Javanese boatmen whom Heyst hired
for the purpose at three o'clock in the morning. The Tesman schooner had
sailed at daylight with the usual land breeze, and was probably still in
sight in the offing at the time. However, the two pursuers after their
experience with the American mate, made for the shore. On landing, they
had another violent row in the German language. But there was no second
fight; and finally, with looks of fierce animosity, they got together
into a gharry--obviously with the frugal view of sharing expenses--and
drove away, leaving an astonished little crowd of Europeans and natives
on the quay.

After hearing this wondrous tale, Davidson went away from the hotel
veranda, which was filling with Schomberg's regular customers. Heyst's
escapade was the general topic of conversation. Never before had that
unaccountable individual been the cause of so much gossip, he judged.
No! Not even in the beginnings of the Tropical Belt Coal Company when
becoming for a moment a public character was he the object of a silly
criticism and unintelligent envy for every vagabond and adventurer in
the islands. Davidson concluded that people liked to discuss that sort
of scandal better than any other.

I asked him if he believed that this was such a great scandal after all.

"Heavens, no!" said that excellent man who, himself, was incapable of
any impropriety of conduct. "But it isn't a thing I would have done
myself; I mean even if I had not been married."

There was no implied condemnation in the statement; rather something
like regret. Davidson shared my suspicion that this was in its essence
the rescue of a distressed human being. Not that we were two romantics,
tingeing the world to the hue of our temperament, but that both of us
had been acute enough to discover a long time ago that Heyst was.

"I shouldn't have had the pluck," he continued. "I see a thing all
round, as it were; but Heyst doesn't, or else he would have been scared.
You don't take a woman into a desert jungle without being made sorry for
it sooner or later, in one way or another; and Heyst being a gentleman
only makes it worse."

CHAPTER SIX

We said no more about Heyst on that occasion, and it so happened that
I did not meet Davidson again for some three months. When we did come
to