the Apia
gossip, and was not surprised that Marchmont figured therein.

"Your friend Marchmont," so ran the letter, "is around, as usual, and in
great form, though he had a narrow squeak of having his head blown
off last week through his gun bursting while out pigeon-shooting up by
Lano-to lake. It seems that it was raining at the time, and the track
down the mountain to the lake was very slippery. He had Johnny Coe the
half-caste, and two Samoans with him. Was carrying his gun under his arm
and going down the track in his usual careless, cock-a-hoopy style when
he tripped over a root of a tree and went down, flat on his face, into
the red slippery soil. He picked himself up again quick enough, and
began swearing at the top of his voice, when a lot of ducks rose from
the lake and came dead on towards him. Without waiting to see if his gun
was all right, although it was covered with mud, he pulled the trigger
of his right barrel, and it burst; one of the fragments gave him a
nasty jagged wound on the chin and the Samoan buck got a lot of small
splinters in his face. After the idiot had pulled himself together he
examined his gun and found that the left barrel was plugged up with hard
red earth. No doubt the other one had also been choked up, for Johnny
Coe said that when he fell the muzzle of the gun was rammed some inches
into the ground."

When I returned to Apia with a cutter load of yams, I called on
Marchmont and found him his old self. He casually mentioned his mishap
and cursed the greasy mountain track as the cause. At the same time he
told me that he was beginning to like the country and that the natives
were "not a bad lot of fellows--if you know how to take 'em".

Then came his final exploit.

There is, in the waters of the Pacific Isles, a species of the trevalli,
or rudder fish, which attains an enormous size and weight. It is a good
eating fish, like all the trevalli tribe, and much thought of by both
Europeans and natives, for, being an exceedingly wary fish, it is not
often caught, at least in Samoa. In the Live Islands, where it is more
common, it is called _La'heu_ and in Fiji _Sanka_. One evening Lama, one
of the Coe half-caste boys, and I succeeded in hooking and capturing one
of these fish, weighing a little over 100 lb. In the morning the Man
Who Knew Everything came to look at it, was much interested, and said he
would have a try for one himself after lunch.

"No use trying in clear daylight,"