n
him her plainest stamp of inferiority, and his only attempts to relieve
it were the twist of bark about his middle and the prong of pig ivory
through the cartilage of his nose. Altogether a very ordinary specimen
of one of the lowest branches of the human family--the Canaques of New
Caledonia.

* * * * *

The three whites sat together well forward, and so they had sat in
silence for hours. But at sunrise, as if some spell had been raised by
the clang of that great copper gong in the east, they stirred and
breathed deep of the salt air and looked at one another with hope in
their haggard faces, and then back toward the land which was now no more
than a gray-green smudge behind them.... "Friends," said the eldest,
whose temples were bound with a scrap of crimson scarf, "Friends--the
thing is done."

With a gesture like conjuring he produced from the breast of his
tattered blouse three cigarettes, fresh and round, and offered them.

"Nippers!" cried the one at his right. "True nippers--name of a little
good man! And here? Doctor, I always said you were a marvel. See if they
be not new from the box!"

Dr. Dubosc smiled. Those who had known him in very different
circumstances about the boulevards, the lobbies, the clubs, would have
known him again and in spite of all disfigurement by that smile. And
here, at the bottom of the earth, it had set him still apart in the
prisons, the cobalt mines, the chain gangs of a community not much given
to mirth. Many a crowded lecture hall at Montpellier had seen him touch
some intellectual firework with just such a twinkle behind his bristly
gray brows, with just such a thin curl of lip.

"By way of celebration," he explained. "Consider. There are seventy-five
evasions from Noumea every six months, of which not more than one
succeeds. I had the figures myself from Dr. Pierre at the infirmary. He
is not much of a physician, but a very honest fellow. Could anybody win
on that percentage without dissipating? I ask you."

"Therefore you prepared for this?"

"It is now three weeks since I bribed the night guard to get these same
nippers."

The other regarded him with admiration. Sentiment came readily upon this
beardless face, tender and languid, but overdrawn, with eyes too large
and soft and oval too long. It was one of those faces familiar enough to
the police which might serve as model for an angel were it not
associated with some revolting piec