ed with blood from their
killing. Curses in Breton, in Marquesan, and American rent the
stillness.

In this dismal, noisome spot was a wretched hut built of _purau_
saplings, as crude a dwelling as the shelter a trapper builds for a
few days' habitation. It was ten feet long and four wide, shaky and
rotten. Inside it was like the lair of a wild beast, a bed of moldy
leaves. A line stretched just below the thatched roof held a few
discolored newspapers.

On the heap of leaves sat the remnant of a man, a crooked skeleton
in dirty rags, his face a parchment of wrinkles framed by a mass of
whitening hair. He looked ages old, his eyes small holes, red rimmed,
his hands, in which he held a shaking piece of paper, foul claws.
His flesh, through his rags, was the deadly white of the morgue. He
looked a Thing no soul should animate.

"Ah! Hemeury Francois," said Le Vergose in the Breton dialect that
recalled their childhood home, "I have brought an American to see you.
You can talk your English to him."

"By damn, yes," croaked the hermit, in the voice of a raven loosed
from a deserted house. But he made no movement until Le Vergose held
before his bone-like nose a pint of strong Tahiti rum. Far back in
his eyes, away beyond the visible organs, there came a gleam of
greater consciousness, a realization of life around him. His mouth,
like a rent in an old, battered purse, gaped, and though no teeth
were there, the vacuity seemed to smile feebly.

He felt about the litter of paper and leaves and found a dirty
cocoanut-shell and a calabash of water. Shaking and gasping, he
poured the bottle of rum into the shell, mixed water with it and
lifted the precious elixir tremblingly to his lips. He made two
choking swallows, and dropped the shell--empty.

His eyes, that had been lost in their raw sockets, scanned me. Then
in mixed French and English he began to talk of himself. From his
rags he produced a rude diary blocked off on scraps of paper, a
minute record of the river and the weather, covering many years.

"Torrent, torrent, torrent." That word was repeated many tunes.
_Hause_ appeared often, signifying that the brook had risen. Every
day he had noted its state. The river had become his god. Alone among
those shadowing, dripping banana-plants, with no human companionship,
he had made his study of the moods of the stream a worship. Pages
and pages were inscribed with lines upon its state.

"Bacchus," I saw repeated on the