lieth in wait secretly as a lion.... Lo, he hath
said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his wrong in his
heart.... Let him be snared in his own pit: in the net which he hid
is his own foot taken.... Lord, break Thou the arm of the wicked
and the evil man...!_"

And when the first luggers came flying from Port Kennedy to the scene of
the wreck and the first investigators went below, they found the
lifeless body of Captain Wetherbee, the only honest man that ever came
to Thursday Island by sea, who had been drowned there: impaled among the
shards and splinters of a broken mirror that had served to mask a saloon
door aboard the murdered Brisbane steamer.

MEANING--CHASE YOURSELF

At the moment I first saw Angus Jones I was taking my ease on Funchal
beach. I lay by an upturned market boat, careful to keep even my feet in
the shade. This is a prime precaution when you wear three toes leaking
through either shoe and you live under a sun that burns like the white
hot spot in a crown sheet. It was breathless noon. The waves came
marching in to hiss on the basalt cobbles. Nevertheless and after a
manner I was taking my ease, the only thing I was still free to take in
all Madeira and the last thing I shall ever give up anywhere.

Off the one quay lay a rusted tramp with the lines of a wash boiler and
the flag of Siam--of all tropic flags--hanging over her stern like a
dishrag to a nail. With shoutings a half-naked crew hauled bags and
crates out of her into shore boats. Her decks were a litter of teak
beams, ill-stowed. She carried a sloven list that brought her port
chains under, and she shouldered at her anchor like a drunken man at a
post. Moreover, the reek of her was an offense along the water front.

And yet I desired her, with all her untidiness, her filth, her unseemly
violence of activity, for presently when her cargo was out she would
stagger off the roadstead as she had come and bear away for some other
port--any other port. Happy ship that could be free to head up into the
world again. Happy souls aboard who should leave the black beach of
Funchal behind them! And so I lay and watched and envied her and them,
admonishing sand hoppers between whiles.

"Do you chance to have the loan of a match about you?"...

I sat up the better to stare. The stranger stood all of seven feet, it
seemed to me, built like a lath, hung around and about with the wreck of
tweeds. But what struck