he strange
light that Moy Jack had glimpsed there, like the flicker of a turning
shark; "me like'm too much one fella head b'long you!"

"What? Head! Whose--my head?"

"Yes," said Karaki simply.

That was the way of it. That was all the mystery. The savage had fallen
enamored of the head of the beachcomber, and Christopher Alexander
Pellett had been betrayed by his fatal red whiskers. In Karaki's country
a white man's head, well smoked, is a thing to be desired above wealth,
above lands and chiefships, fame, and the love of women. In all
Karaki's country was no head like the head of Pellett. Therefore Karaki
had served to win it with the patience and single faith of a Jacob. For
this he had schemed and waited, committed theft and murder, expended
sweat and cunning, starved and denied himself, nursed, watched, tended,
fed, and saved his man that he might bring the head alive and on the
hoof--so to speak--to the spot where he could remove it at leisure and
enjoy the fruits of his labor in safety.

* * * * *

Pellett saw all this at a flash, understood it so far as any white could
understand: the whole elemental and stupendous simplicity of it. And
standing there in his new strength and sanity under the fair promise of
the morning, he gave a laugh that pealed across the waters and started
the sea birds from their cliffs, the deep-throated laugh of a man who
fathoms and accepts the last great jest....

For finally, by corrected list, the possessions of Christopher Alexander
Pellett were these: his name, still intact; the ruins of some rusty
ducks; his precious red whiskers--and a soul which had been neatly
recovered, renewed, refurbished, reanimated, and restored to him by his
good friend Karaki.

_"Thou shouldst die as he dies,
For whom none sheddeth tears;
Filling thine eyes
And fulfilling thine ears
With the brilliance ... the bloom
and the beauty...."_

Thus chanted Christopher Alexander Pellett over the waters of the bay,
and then whirled, throwing wide his arms:

"Shoot, damn you! It's cheap at the price!"

THE SLANTED BEAM

All the world meets beneath the towering spire of Shway Dagohn, which
pins back the clouds and throws a shadow between India and the China
Sea. All paths in the East tend toward that great pagoda with its mighty
shaft of gold. Around the sweep of its pedestal, among its terraced
mazes, is one of the common crossroads where