ropes that bound him, and knelt before him and kowtowed, and pressed the
late prisoner's toes with his forehead. Then--and this was terribly
touching, my informant said, and reminded him of St. Petersburg--one of
the old chief's granddaughters, a little brown slip of a girl, slender
and shapely as a cigar, flung her arms round his neck, and hung--just
hung. When they tried to get her away she kicked at them, but she never
so much as once changed the expression of her upturned face, which was
one of adoration. Well, the people hollered and made drums of their
cheeks and beat on them, and the first thing Signor Recent-Disaster knew
he was being dressed in a scarlet coat that had belonged to a British
colonel dead this hundred years. The girl by now had had to let go and
had dropped at his feet like a ripe guava--and he was being ushered into
the largest bamboo-legged house that the place boasted, and told as
plainly as round eyes, gesticulations, and moans can, that the house was
his to enjoy. Then they began to give him things. First his own dress
suit, ruined by sea-water and shrinking, his formerly boiled shirt, his
red silk underwear still wearable, his black pearl stud and every
stiver of gold, silver, copper, and English banknotes that had been
found in his pockets. They gave him knives, rough silver bangles, heaps
of elaborate mats, a handful of rather disappointing pearls, a scarlet
head-dress with a feather that had been a famous chief's, a gun without
a lock, and, what pleased him most (must have), a bit of looking-glass
big enough to see half of his face in at a time. They allowed him to
choose his own house-keeper; and, although several beauties were knocked
down in the ensuing riot, he managed to satisfy them that his
unalterable choice rested upon the little lady who had been the most
convincing in her recognition of his genius, and--what's the
line?--"Hang there like fruit, my soul, till the tree die."

Well, he offered to put me up, and show me how the gods keep house. I
counter-offered to keep him with me, by force of dynamite, carry him
back to civilization, and go shares on his voice, as per circular. And
this is where the big But comes in. My offer was pestilential; he
shunned it.

"You shall have my black pearl stud for your trouble," he said. "I
bought her years ago in a pawnshop at Aix. But _me_--no. I have found my
niche, and my temple. But you shall be the judge of that."

"You don't _want_ to e