might
help you," he continued. "I might, but I won't. I've seen a good many of
your kind before, drift stuff that gets washed up on the beach. You're
not worth it. And now, since you have no further business with me, I'd
be obliged if you'd kindly get the hell out of my front yard. You're
interfering with the view." ...

Junius Peabody found himself groping away through the sunlight on Fufuti
beach once more. A dead calm held the air. Under the steady, low organ
note of the reef he could hear only the drag of his own steps, the
curious, unforgetable "shr-ring" of boot leather on coral.

It was borne upon him then that he had just acquired a liberal
education, that he had learned more essential facts within the last hour
than he had ever gained before in his twenty-odd years--a tabloid of
life--and too late to be of any use. Such abstractions are sometimes
valuable to a man, but they are not the sort that brings a lump in his
throat and a winking in his eyes. The thing, the sheerly heartfelt thing
that Junius Peabody said to himself, sniffling, was this: "And he
didn't--didn't even offer me a drink!"

There was nothing to draw him any farther--no help, no promise of
success, not even a single witness to shame with a grin or to urge with
an expectant stare--nothing outside himself. Fufuti beach lay stark and
aching white before him. The two thieves had long since lost themselves
among the palms. Down by the water's edge a couple of Bendemeer's boat
boys were salvaging odds and ends lost overboard in an upset in
yesterday's heavy surf. They did not waste a thought or a look on him.
He was many degrees less important than a lot of other rubbish around
there. He might just as well, he might much better, slump down in a
sodden heap amid the rest of the jetsam. And yet he did not.... And he
did go on. For some obscure, irrational human reason, he did go on.
Perhaps because of the tiny coal in his breast, blown red by Bendemeer's
blasting contempt. Perhaps because, after all, no man ever quite
achieves complete resemblance to a jellyfish.

* * * * *

On the southern tip of Fufuti stands Tenbow Head, the end of a rough
little jut of land known locally as the Rocks. To speak by the book,
there is neither rock nor head, but the abyss turned in its sleep once,
and shouldered half a mile of Fufuti's shore line to a height of thirty
feet--enough for a mountain in this sea of humble atolls. Incident