H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ Ah, well, many a man has done worse, but I am glad you told me. I believe in you and I trust you. You shall marry Kineia. For the last year the thing has been growing in my mind. I have said to myself: ‘Your end is approaching, and here is a man who will take care of Kineia if he only learns to love her and if he proves worthy of her.’ That is what I have said. And I have said to myself: ‘You will make a will and every sou you possess they shall possess—schooner and all.’ I made that will last night. ”

“ Never did a man fall on his feet more surely than Lygon.
Captain Jourdain had lost his wife only the year before and he was in need of a friend. He had married a native woman fourteen years ago and being a straight, simple-minded man with an idea, somehow, that Kanakas have souls just the same as Christians, and that love once found is the only thing worth finding, and the only thing worth guarding, he had stuck to her faithfully as she to him. ”

“ Packard returning next evening found Lygon incapable of coming to dinner. During the last few days Lygon had been taking gin to soothe his mind; to-night he was tipsy, and as he and Kineia dined opposite one another his snoring came distinctly from the room above.
“My husband is ill,” said Kineia, with a little movement of disgust. They talked in low tones during the meal and when dinner was over, Packard, lighting a cigar in the veranda, saw Kineia in the lamplit room going to a box that stood on a little table by the lamp stand. ”

“ Lygon was silent for a moment. Then he spoke.
“Kineia, I am ruined. All this around us is as a dream that must go. Kineia, I killed a man once, in anger. I escaped, but that man Packard was present, and now I have to give him everything or he will tell.”
“Everything?” said Kineia.
“I offered him half I possess—as well offer the gray shark half your body when he can get the whole—no not everything. He will leave me a thousand dollars to begin the world again with.”
Kineia was silent.
“He is going back to San Francisco on the schooner to tell—unless——”
“Unless?” ”

“ He cried once and went down.”
“Waugh,” said Taro, rubbing his eyes. “When the belly of a shark has taken a man there is no use in searching for him late at night. He was a stranger, anyway.”
It was a temperance story that explained a lot of things, among others the prohibition of alcohol on that island by order of Kineia. Lygon, returned to freedom and sobriety and happiness, never knew. Kineia, happy again like a joyous child, never told, and the ferns where the old gods of Utara once held their revels are safe to keep their secret forever. ”

“ On the beach where ten-inch waves were falling, half a dozen natives stood watching the oncoming boats, and now from a frame house half hidden in the grove to the right came the figure of a tall old man, a European, dressed in white clothes and carryping a gun resting on the crook of his arm. ”

“ Then to the child; “Kineia, the bad white men are still here. Listen, they are cutting our trees. Here is one we must hide from them. Should they come here you will say nothing of him.”
“Nothing, father,” said Kineia, gazing at the stranger with wide-pupiled eyes.
The captain led the way round to the storehouses. He was the sole trader on this island, working the business with his own schooner and through an agent in San Francisco. He passed the go-downs where copra was stored and led the way to a building behind them where he kept trade goods. ”

“ I killed a man in a fight in a gambling den of New York. He was a German Jew. The quarrel was about money, and I was excited with drink and he struck me, then I struck him. I am a powerful man, and the blow took him on the point of the chin and broke his neck. ”

“ Author of The Beach of Dreams, Etc.
Something about the female of the species which most of us appreciate but seldom realize. It is a tragedy of first principles, but a tragedy that leaves us satisfied
UTARA lies northeast of Clermont Tonnerre, a high island out of trade tracks and the most lonely and beautiful in the Pacific. ”