se let me off," he requested, in his most top-lofty English accent.
"You can see for yourself that there's nothing of interest--nothing but
a beastly lot of nigger cabins, and dirty coral rock that will cut your
boots to pieces. I'd much rather smoke and wait for you in peace;" and,
taking out his case and lighting a cigarette, he waved it gaily to us as
we rowed off.

He had certainly been right about Behring's Point--Charlie was absurdly
certain that he had known it before, and had some reason for not
landing--for a more forlorn and poverty-stricken foot-hold of humanity
could hardly be conceived; a poor little cluster of negro cabins,
indeed, scrambling up from the beach, and with no streets but craggy
pathways in and out among the grey clinker-like coral rock.

But it was touching to find even here that, though the whole worldly
goods of the community would scarcely have fetched ten dollars, the
souls of men were still held worth caring for--one handsome youth's
contempt notwithstanding--for presently we came upon a pretty little
church, with a schoolhouse near by, while from the roof of an adjacent
building we were hailed by a pleasant-faced white man, busy with some
shingling.

It was the good priest of the little place, Father Serapion, disguised
in overalls and the honest grime of his labour; like a true Benedictine,
praying with his strong and skilful hands. He was down from his roof in
a moment, a youngish man with the face of a practical dreamer, strangely
happy-looking in what would seem to most an appalling isolation; there
alone, month after month, with his black flock. But evidently his was no
such thought, for he showed us with pride the new schoolhouse he was
building out of the coral limestone with his own hands, as he had built
the church, every stone of it, and the picturesque well, and the
rampart-like wall round the churchyard. His garden, too, he was very
proud of, as he well might be, wrested as it was out of the solid rock.

Father Serapion and Charlie were old friends, and, when we had accepted
the Father's invitation to step into his neat little house--also built
with his own hands--and dissipate with him to the extent of some grape
juice and an excellent cigar, Charlie took occasion to confide in him
with regard to Tobias, and, to his huge delight, discovered that a man
answering very closely to his description had dropped in there with a
large sponger two days before. He had only stopped