and
always the soul of justice. After giving him up altogether for lost, we
put seals on his private effects, and Peter Jones took charge of the
government, advised by Stanley and me. It showed the splendid influence
Mr. Clemm had had that Peter had become quite a model, and instead of
breaking loose was all on the side of law and order. Our idea was to
hold the fort until a new Commissioner might be sent, and the only
slight change we made was to double our salaries. The natives had grown
so used to civilized government that they made no trouble, and we three
might have been governing the island yet if a man-of-war hadn't suddenly
popped in.

It was the _Ringarooma_, the self-same ship that had landed Mr. Clemm
some eighteen months before, and Stanley and I were the first to board
her, meeting the captain at the break of the poop, just when he had come
down from the bridge.

"I have the honor to report the disappearance of Deputy Commissioner
James Howard Fitzroy Clemm," said I. "He sailed from here on March
sixteenth in the government yacht _Felicity_, and has never been seen
nor heard from since."

The captain, who was a sharp, curt man, looked puzzled.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, as abrupt as a
thunderbolt.

"Why, sir, you landed him yourself," said Stanley, "and the same day he
took possession of the island and hoisted the British flag."

"Annexed us," said I.

The captain frowned very angry, like if we were making sport of him we
should fast rue it.

"I never landed anybody here but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I
deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin
to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called
himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more
authority to annex this island than you have."

* * * * *

Months afterwards we learned that instead of being lost in the
_Felicity_ like we all had thought, Clemm had turned pirate in a small
way down to the Westward till the natives took and ate him at
Guadalcanaar.

CLOUD OF BUTTERFLIES

Behind Apia, on the edge of the Taufusi swamp, was a small collection of
huts, jumbled together in squalor and dirt, with pigs dozing in the ooze
and slatternly women beating out _siapo_ in the shade. It was a dunghill
of out-islanders, Nieues, Uveans, Tongans, Tapatueans, banded together
in a common poverty; landless people o