THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 DUVERSIIl OF CA1 , SAN 
 
 LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA
 
 3 1822 00196 9104 
 
 f/7
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 t 
 
 KRIS-GIRL
 
 MILLS & BOON'S 
 
 SPRING NOVELS 
 
 The Shining Height* I. A. R. WVLIE 
 
 The Picture Book HAROLD BEGBIE 
 
 The Strength of the Strong JACK LONDON 
 A London Posy SOPHIE COLE 
 
 Days of Probation LOUISE GERARD 
 
 He Whom I Follow HORACE W. C. NEWTE 
 The Conquest HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES 
 Big Happiness PAN 
 
 Kris-Girl BEATRICE GRIMSHAW 
 
 The Lady in the Black Mask TOM GALLON 
 Hayle OXFORD SOMERSET 
 
 The Dividing Sword HAROLD SPENDER 
 The Unknown Mr. Kent ROY NORTON 
 Kiddies J. J. BELL 
 
 Love The Magnet PAN
 
 KRIS- GIRL 
 
 BY 
 
 BEATRICE GRIMSHAW 
 
 
 
 AUTHOR OF " WHEN THE RED GODS CALL,' 
 "GUINEA GOLD," ETC. 
 
 MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 
 
 49 RUPERT STREET 
 
 LONDON, W. 
 
 COLONIAL UBBAET,
 
 Published
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAQK 
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG ... 44 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR . . .95 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN .... 149 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST . . . .182 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 MERMAID JANE 249 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID . 279 
 
 V
 
 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 
 
 SOMETHING had frightened the birds in the jungle : 
 the white cockatoos flew shrieking from tree to 
 tree ; the small bright feathered things that swing 
 in the sunlight gathered themselves into the 
 innermost clefts of bamboo clumps, and whistled 
 pitifully. 
 
 Something was darkening the glory of the 
 equatorial noon. Hidden as we three were in the 
 forest, we could not see what was happening be- 
 yond, but the round white spots of sun sprayed 
 off no longer from the varnished leaves, and the 
 dark of the mysterious gullies and gorges had 
 grown very dark indeed. 
 
 " It's going to rain," said the old lady in a thin 
 voice, looking up at the dense roof of palm and 
 teak and cotton wood, hung with thick cordage of 
 liana, that shut out all view of the sky. Cristina 
 (I addressed her as Miss Raye, but thought is free) 
 stopped chasing an opal-blue butterfly as big as a 
 1
 
 2 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 swallow, and put on the hat she had been using 
 as a net. 
 
 " It's going to do more than that, unless those 
 birds are fools," she said. " We had better get 
 back to the steamer, quick march." 
 
 "This is outside the hurricane belt," I put in 
 timidly. Cristina seemed to have travelled the 
 whole world over, and I had never been away 
 from Europe before this voyage ; moreover, I had 
 only known the girl and her chaperon for two or 
 three days since the Juliana called at Macassar 
 from Singapore and took them on. Still, I put 
 in my word, as I happened to know a few rough 
 facts about tropical conditions in general. It had 
 been my business to know. We are manufacturers 
 and wholesale exporters of but it wouldn't in- 
 terest you to hear. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she allowed, shortening her dress 
 with rapid fingers. " Still, Celebes can put up a 
 very pretty show at times. . . . Mrs. Ash, dear 
 woman, pull your skirt into your belt and take 
 Mr. Garden's arm ; you've got to break your own 
 record in the next three-quarters of an hour." 
 
 She was still speaking, when an appalling sound 
 broke upon our ears the whistle of the Juliana, 
 unmistakably in a starting humour. 
 
 "Oh, the brute ! she can't, she daren't ! " 
 exclaimed Cristina ; " she wasn't due to go till 
 six." . . . For a moment we stood like figures 
 in a stereoscope photo, struck stiff in the very act 
 of movement. Then the Juliana whistled again
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 3 
 
 the long loud hoot that means " Going at once." 
 We started b; ck down the track at a pace that none 
 of us could have kept up for three minutes but it 
 was not two, before the last long howl sounded 
 up from the beach below. At this, we all stopped 
 again, and then began to run. I dragged Mrs. 
 Ash along as if she had been a sack, Cristina 
 trotted like a little mule. It was all of no avail. 
 When we came out on the top of the great cliff 
 that overhung the shore, the faithless ship was 
 just clearing the passage in the reef, half a mile 
 out at sea. 
 
 Cristina, up to this, had been behaving like a 
 silly school-girl, calling the steamer pettish names, 
 stamping her tiny foot in its Cuban shoe when- 
 ever we halted for breath, and scolding at every- 
 body in general. Xow a sudden change came 
 over her : something that I had not seen looked 
 out from her face. She became calm, and her 
 small blue eyes (they were small, though very blue 
 and pretty) grew curiously bright and seemed to 
 be looking at something a long way off ... not 
 the Juliana. 
 
 " There was a reason," she said. " Weather 
 yes, probably. Some reefs can't be passed through 
 unless the wind is in the right quarter. The 
 opening here is to the west, and that nasty cloud 
 is rising from the west. And the water of the 
 bay is black-blue-green no soundings probably. 
 . . . Yes, if the Juliana hadn't got out, she'd have 
 been blown ashore."
 
 4 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 The old lady, who had more ways of being silent 
 than anyone I had ever known, took her arm out 
 of mine, looked round for a fallen log, and com- 
 posedly sat down upon it. Without saying a 
 word, she succeeded in making Cristina and my- 
 self understand that she held us responsible for 
 the whole thing. 
 
 It seemed plain that we were abandoned 
 marooned, practically in the wilds of the Celebes 
 jungle, no one knew how far from any white man's 
 habitation. We had not so much as a biscuit or 
 a box of matches by way of stores, and no clothes 
 but those we stood up in which clothes were as 
 completely wet through with the heat of the 
 jungle as if we had been dropped into a river. 
 The birds kept on crying ; a cold wind suddenly 
 blew out of the forest and as suddenly stopped. 
 Up the open sky to seaward a strange black screen 
 was slowly rising ; as it rose the sunlight died. 
 
 "Cristina!" said the old lady suddenly and 
 sharply. There was something expectant in the 
 tone. Cristina answered never a word. She 
 seemed to be thinking. It was an odd time to 
 think, out there in the jungle, with a storm chasing 
 us from the open sea, and I began to break in with 
 some question or remark, but the old lady shook 
 her umbrella at me, and said : 
 
 "Sh! Let her alone." 
 
 There was a very short space of silence, the cloud 
 climbing all the while, and then Cristina said 
 briskly :
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 5 
 
 " There'll be a plantation within a mile or two ; 
 the captain calculated on that, or he wouldn't have 
 done it. It isn't copra, or they'd have been loading 
 it. The only other thing they grow just here is 
 rubber. Take this track, help Mrs. Ash along, 
 and look sharp for rubber trees. Now, pigi ! " 
 
 If I had not known the expressive Malay word 
 for " hurry up," I should have guessed it, from 
 the look of the weather. " Pigi," we did. Mrs. 
 Ash made wonderful progress, half carried on my 
 arm, her black thin draperies flying, and her 
 feather-weight little body scarcely touching the 
 ground. In scarcely ten minutes, the expected 
 happened. We came out of the dense jungle of 
 palm and creepers, into an enchanted forest. 
 
 It was a rubber plantation, in sober fact. A 
 carpet of fine green grass supported innumerable 
 reddish-coloured columnar trunks, holding up a 
 dark, cool canopy of leaves at a uniform height of 
 some twenty feet. Wherever you looked, you 
 were the centre of a radiating star of avenues, 
 grassy, soundless, solitary, bordered by the red 
 trunks, and the great varnished leaves and long 
 crimson buds of the rubber trees. Over all the 
 avenues, and all the trees together, spread that 
 dark, cool, shining canopy of leafage, like one 
 huge tent. There were doubtless gaps among the 
 tree tops, but from where we stood, they did not 
 show. It was a wonderful and a lovely sight. 
 
 We had about twenty seconds to look at it, 
 standing on the borders of the clearing ; and theii
 
 6 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 the sky fell on our heads. This may seem an 
 extravagant way of saying that it rained, but it is 
 the truth. The thick tent above us made scarcely 
 any difference in the way of shelter : the rain 
 simply flung itself down in huge sheets of water, 
 as if a colossal tank had broken somewhere just 
 above. And the sound of its trampling on the 
 leaves was like the sound of a troop of cavalry 
 going over a railway bridge. 
 
 " When the rain's before the wind, you must 
 then your topsails mind," quoted Cristina in a 
 piercing shout. " Pigi, it's coming." She fled 
 through the rubber forest, as light on her feet as 
 Botticelli's Flora, her soaked white draperies 
 glimmering among the trees as she led us, I do not 
 know how. In a minute or two, we had crossed 
 the corner of the plantation, and were out in an 
 open clearing ; the rain was bucketing down on 
 short grass planted with ornamental trees, and 
 we were flying along a wide tiled walk towards 
 a house with steps leading up to its verandah, and 
 tall white marble pillars in front. At this point, 
 I picked up Mrs. Ash in my arms and sprinted after 
 Cristina, who was running wonderfully. I had 
 heard "it"; it was howling behind us in the 
 forest like a beast let loose, and through its long, 
 terrible cry came the crack of falling trees. 
 
 The next thing I remember was the slamming of 
 doors tall, mahogany doors set in lintels of 
 marble and the sudden silence of a great dim 
 central hall, furnished with things that looked
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 7 
 
 rich and costly, and floored with wonderful painted 
 tiles, over which our soaked clothes were dropping 
 mud and water. There were no windows in the hall, 
 and all its doors had been shut. It was lighted 
 by a great cut crystal lamp hung in the centre. 
 
 Under the lamp, standing with her jewelled 
 hand on a table of Florentine mosaic, was one of 
 the handsomest women I had ever seen. It is 
 difficult to describe beauty, since the terms are 
 almost the same in every case, though the results 
 of different combinations vary infinitely. Pretty 
 women have almost always straight noses and 
 short upper lips, low-growing hair and plenty of 
 it, good colour, enticing corners to the mouth and 
 eyes, well-developed figures, white necks and arms. 
 The variations you must put in for yourself. Pink 
 cheeks, yellow hair, small mouths, and blue eyes 
 are not much beloved by novelists on the look- 
 out for originality I have observed that the 
 tendency of the present day heroines is towards 
 green eyes and " mouths too large for perfect 
 beauty," but the ideal above described is good 
 enough for the average man. The lady of the 
 marble palace had every advantage I have named, 
 and one or two more just that one or two that 
 you cannot describe, and must look for among 
 your own recollections. 
 
 This is what I saw. Mrs. Ash told me after- 
 wards that she had seen a little more ; she had 
 seen that the lady was no longer young close on 
 forty if a day. Well, Helen was forty when she
 
 8 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 ran away with Paris, and I suppose the Trojan 
 women rubbed the damning circumstance into 
 her, during every day of the ten years' siege, with 
 chronological emendations up to date. But ap- 
 parently Paris did not mind. 
 
 After that wild rush into the hall, and the 
 slamming of the doors in the face of the gale out- 
 side, it was Cristina who first recovered her presence 
 of mind if she had ever lost it, which is doubtful. 
 Dripping as she was, she advanced with perfect 
 dignity to the lady of the house, and addressed 
 her in Dutch. The lady replied : 
 
 " There, for gracious sake, talk English, if you 
 can. You don't sound Dutch, and anyhow I 
 hardly know a word of the beastly language." 
 
 I was a trifle startled ; the address of this queen 
 of beauty hardly seemed to match her splendid 
 presence. 
 
 " I'm so glad you're English," said Cristina 
 prettily, " we're in a dreadful plight. That 
 wretched steamer went off at two minutes' notice 
 when the storm came on, and left us to perish in 
 the jungle." 
 
 "Oh, she would, with that sort of a gale getting 
 up. Mind you, there oughtn't to be any gale at 
 this time of year, and I supposs she counted on 
 that when she put in to let the passengers see 
 things, but the one thing you can't count on in this 
 part of Celebes is weather. She would have been 
 on the coral bottom half an hour ago if she hadn't 
 cleared. Listen to that ! "
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 9 
 
 Not even the solid marble walls could shut away 
 the crashing of the wind outside, and the waterfall 
 roar of the rain. We could feel the house quiver 
 every time a new gust struck it. 
 
 " The captain knew I was here all right," said 
 the beauty consolingly. " Everybody knows me : 
 I'm the only white but one for fifty miles. You'll 
 ' all have to stay till the steamer comes back ; she'll 
 be here in a week, and I'd love to have you. I 
 could fair bite my nails off sometimes, for loneli- 
 ness, in this great jail of a place. I'm a widow, 
 you know, Australian ; married a Dutch, more fool 
 I, and settled down in this awful place, because 
 he was rich. He died two years ago, and I'm 
 managing for myself. I have to stay because ..." 
 
 Here, much to everyone's dismay, the lady of 
 the palace suddenly sat down upon a yellow satin 
 chair, put her hands over her face, and began to 
 cry. 
 
 " If you knew what a brute he was to me," she 
 sobbed. ' If you knew what a will he left ..." 
 
 Mrs. Ash, dripping mud and water from every 
 pore, stood stiffly up and regarded the lady with 
 the air of one to whom no manifestations of grief 
 accompanied by bad grammar, could possibly be 
 interesting or touching. But Cristina's eyes had 
 taken on that odd sparkle that I had seen before, 
 and she looked excited. 
 
 A curious thing followed. She dived into her 
 wet pocket, produced a silver card-case, and handed 
 a card to the weeping lady. The latter read it,
 
 10 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 rose to her full five feet ten of height, and solemnly 
 embraced Cristina. 
 
 " ' Miss Cristina Raye,' why, that's the Kris- 
 Girl !" she said. "My dear, there's no one in 
 the whole world whom I'd rather see. All Malaysia 
 is talking about you." 
 
 " I suppose," said Cristina with a slightly bored 
 expression, " it was the diamond-mine manager's 
 wife who started that." 
 
 " Not so much her as the Sultana who had the 
 gold parasol." 
 
 " She has it now," remarked Cristina with an 
 enigmatic smile. 
 
 " So she has, so she has ! " cried the widow 
 admiringly. " And the Governor whose daughter's 
 dowry ' ' 
 
 " Oh, please ! " said Cristina deprecatingly. 
 
 " If you don't like it, my dear. But God bless 
 us and keep us, you're all as wet as drowned rats ; 
 what am I thinking of ? Jonges ! ' ' 
 
 A thin, dark native, in white jacket and red 
 sarong, appeared in a doorway. The lady spoke 
 to him in somewhat halting Malay. Then she 
 led the way into a suite of rooms opening off the 
 hall, and began disposing of us in magnificent 
 style bedroom, dressing-room and boudoir to each. 
 Clothes of her late husband were exhumed from 
 wardrobes for me ; other wardrobes ransacked for 
 the two women. 
 
 *' They're bringing you all hot schnapps and 
 water," she announced as she left us. " Just you
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 11 
 
 put it down and none of you'll be a hair the 
 worse." 
 
 She stepped with the pace of an empress out 
 into the hall ; I am sure Cleopatra never looked so 
 queenly. As she went she turned her head. 
 
 " Don't be too long," she said, " lunch is coming- 
 in, and I'm sure you're all fair empty in your in- 
 sides." 
 
 The slightest possible sound, resembling the 
 uncorking of a soda-water bottle, came from 
 Cristina's room. As for Mrs. Ash's feelings, a 
 treacherous ventilator made me master of them 
 shortly after. 
 
 " Torchon or crochet is neither here nor there, 
 but real Venice point upon them makes you feel 
 like Jezebel ..." 
 
 The storm was already slackening when we came 
 forth, dry and clothed ; these baby hurricanes of 
 equatorial Malaysia are brief as they are keen. 
 The lady of the house was waiting in the grand 
 saloon. 
 
 " You look splendid," was her comment. " Miss 
 Raye, you must be a witch to make that worked 
 gauze fit you so well. Mr. Garden, you want 
 nothing on earth but a couple of buttons moved 
 in over your stomach ; you're almost of a size 
 with Van Cloon, but he would eat right through 
 thirty dishes of rice-table, every ' makan siang ' 
 at twelve o'clock. I do hope you find yourself 
 comfortable in my things, Mrs. Ash."
 
 12 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Thank you extremely," replied Mrs. Ash with 
 polite bitterness. I never saw a human being so 
 expressive of wordless protest, from head to shoe- 
 sole, as Mrs. Ash in the widow's gorgeous, over- 
 flowing gown. 
 
 The meal was splendidly served, on heavy solid 
 silver, china, and cut glass ; it was liberal enough, 
 and the wines were better than necessary, but 
 there was a suggestion of something got up in a 
 hurry about the whole entertainment, that con- 
 vinced me Mrs. Van Cloon did not treat herself 
 so handsomely as she treated her guests. Her 
 dress, too, and the dresses she had lent, struck me 
 though I am not a connoisseur as being none 
 of the newest, in spite of their gorgeousness. 
 There was, indeed, an air of pinched magnificence, 
 of slightly limping grandeur, about the whole place, 
 that set one wondering as to whether the opulent 
 lady were not a little of a miser. Money must be 
 there: the rubber estate was clearly a big one, 
 and well managed ; and the price of rubber, that 
 year, was higher than it had ever been before 
 or, for the matter of that, has ever been since. 
 And yet the place was pinched. 
 
 We went into the grand saloon after " makan." 
 The storm was quite over now ; all the splendid 
 windows were thrown open down to the marble 
 pavement ; a delicious scent of wet grass and 
 flowers came in across the verandah. Mrs. Van 
 Cloon, who saw that Mrs. Ash was not feeling at 
 home, took her off into a corner and, with wonder-
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 13 
 
 ful good luck, started the subject of kitchen stoves. 
 Kitchen stoves and the Idylls of the King were 
 the two themes on which Mrs. Ash could be 
 eloquent. To hear her explain the theory of 
 draught and dampers, or give you, in clear-cut 
 tones, her reasons for considering Guinevere, 
 Elaine, Isolt, Ettarre, Enid, and Vivien, lazy- 
 boned hussies who were enough to drive three 
 Round Tables to destruction and despair because 
 they were never known to do anything but loaf 
 about the castle, or go hunting in unsuitable silk 
 gowns was to understand the views and the 
 philosophy of Mrs. Ash as nothing else could make 
 you understand them. 
 
 Cristina found a seat upon a chair that imitated 
 a harp in appearance, and played a tune happily 
 a brief one when you sat on it. There was 
 another chair near it, which I took myself. It 
 looked like a huge scarlet crab with gold legs (I am 
 not exaggerating : you can buy the same hideous 
 thing for an appalling price in the Mercatoria of 
 Venice, any day you are fool enough to wish to do 
 so). One lifted the back of the crab up by its 
 china eyes, and found a cushioned seat inside. 
 This, and the awful bunch of green glass grapes, 
 each grape the size of a hen's egg, that contained 
 the electric light, led me to conclude that the late 
 Van Cloon had been possessed of more money than 
 taste. The widow loved her various curios ; she 
 called our attention to their beauties, and also to 
 a clock that had a Spanish girl's face above it,
 
 14 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 which unrolled its eyes distractingly from side to 
 side at every tick, a mechanical fan, meantime, 
 raising and lowering itself with ghastly mechanical 
 coquetry. I had never thought to see flirting done 
 by machinery. 
 
 " Isn't she a dear, and isn't it all delightfully 
 Victorian ? " commented Cristina, under cover of 
 a vigorous onslaught of Mrs. Ash's upon German 
 circular stoves. ' ' Our grandmothers would just have 
 loved all this. Amber satin and beads it's 
 gloriously beady and cornices and pilasters and 
 etageres and mirrors and marble tables and all 
 these dear hideous chairs, and did you see the 
 fire?" 
 
 "The what ? " I asked, surreptitiously wiping 
 my face, under cover of driving away a fly. I 
 think the thermometer must have been standing 
 at about ninety-five in the shade. 
 
 Cristina pointed with her chin. I looked, and 
 saw the oddest and most pathetic decoration, 
 surely, that drawing-room ever boasted. 
 
 There was a fireplace, marble, and very hand- 
 some ; an overmantel also of marble ; a hearth 
 of costly Dutch tiles. There were fire-irons, a 
 fender, bars. Behind the bars was a mimic fire, 
 with coals of black and scarlet enamel, flames of 
 yellow tinsel, and smoke of bluish-coloured wool. 
 
 " Good.Lord ! " was all that I found to say. 
 
 " It shows Van Cloon must have been fond of 
 her," commented Cristina, somewhat ellipticallv. 
 
 " How ? "
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 15 
 
 '' The thing is a monument of home-sickness 
 exile that almost makes one cry, in spite of its 
 absurdity. Somebody was very homesick ; it 
 wasn't the Dutchman, for they use stoves in 
 Holland ; so it must have been she. And Van 
 Cloon indulged her with this horror. It's as clear 
 as glass." 
 
 " It would not have been to me, but I can see 
 you're right," I said humbly. And in the same 
 moment Mrs. Ash gave us a proof of Cristina's 
 Tightness. 
 
 She fixed her eyes longingly on the mimic fire, 
 got up from her chair (it was solid gilt, with 
 looking-glass-panelled legs) and drifted over to 
 the marble mantel and hearth. There she sat 
 down, and, with her creased, elderly hands 
 stretched out to an imaginary blaze, seemed to 
 lose herself in thoughts of winter England. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cloon followed her. 
 
 "My husband put in that for me," she said, 
 nodding at the hideous thing. " Bonzer, isn't it ? 
 He was always ready to spend money on me, was 
 Van I must say that for him ; and when I began 
 to fret after the Gippsland winters, he said he'd 
 settle things so that I could fancy I was up in the 
 mountains in June." 
 
 I glanced at Cristina. She smiled slightly ; I 
 thought she looked a little bored, as if she had gone 
 through this sort of thing very often. . . . What 
 sort of thing ? I found no answer to the question 
 yet.
 
 16 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Next day we were taken out in a couple of sulkies, 
 drawn by fiery small Macassar horses, to see the 
 plantation. Our clothes had turned up by this 
 time ; Cristina had sent down to the jetty to see 
 if the captain of the Juliana hadn't dumped them 
 ashore before he left, and luckily, he had. So we 
 drove along the shaded avenues, comfortable in 
 body and mind. I think none of us was quarrelling 
 with the accident that had brought us here, by 
 this time ; the establishment of the widow Van 
 Cloon promised to be interesting. 
 
 Cristina Raye, it seemed, had been making good 
 use of her time. She told me quite a good deal 
 about our hostess, as we bumped lightly along the 
 grass avenues towards the central collection of 
 smoke-houses and sheds. The widow had married 
 Van Cloon when she was thirty ; some unhappy 
 love affair had kept her single until then. He was 
 old when she married him, but he had lived for 
 eight years. He had been dead two years now, 
 leaving behind him a will that was, as his widow 
 declared, " a sin and a scandal." According to 
 Cristina, it was quite the most interesting thing she 
 had come across for a long time. Indeed, the 
 very mention of it seemed to brighten her up, but 
 why, I could not imagine. 
 
 By this time, I was feeling not a little " in- 
 trigued " about Miss Raye. I had met her for 
 the first time on board the Juliana, just as we 
 were sailing from Macassar, several days earlier. 
 I do not speak Dutch, and my German is an uncer-
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 17 
 
 tain quantity ; in consequence, the easily-flowing 
 ship-talk that commonly puts one in possession of 
 all sorts of facts about all kinds of passengers, 
 within a day or two of sailing, was of little more 
 use to me than a piano to a deaf man. I did pick 
 up a stray word or two it was said that the girl 
 was English (which needed no saying), that she 
 was well off, and travelling for pleasure with her 
 chaperon. There was also some suggestion, dimly 
 comprehended through fogs of unfamiliar lan- 
 guages, of a tragic story, a grief . . . and, indeed, 
 I had caught a look on the delicate girlish face at 
 times that seemed strangely ungirlish and sad. 
 This was all I knew except that Miss Cristina, 
 Raye and her chaperon kept very much to them- 
 selves, were conscientious in seeing all the sights, 
 and clung to their own national ways of dressing, 
 living, and eating, as far as possible. When the 
 hour of siesta arrived, and all the ship, male and 
 female, calmly unclad itself and lay down to doze 
 in pyjamas, combing jacket and Malay sarong, 
 according to sex, and the decks of the Juliana 
 blossomed with bare legs and bath slippers pendent 
 from sleepy toes ; when the fifteen-stone lady of 
 a Commissioner waddled in to lunch wearing nothing 
 but a brief bedgown and a sort of coloured table- 
 cloth wrapped about her legs, and her unmarried 
 daughter, debarred by Dutch-colonial custom 
 from the kabaja dan sarong of the matron, pro- 
 menaded the hurricane deck at four p.m. in the 
 thinnest of silk wrappers, worn over a sole chemise 
 2
 
 18 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Cristina Raye and Mrs. Ash, as if in protest, grew 
 more and more lineny and tailored and tied and 
 collared and bonneted. At least, Cristina wore 
 collars and linen tailor-mades, fitting her as a 
 stocking fits a foot, while Mrs. Ash encountered the 
 ardours of the equatorial noon in gauzes of black 
 and grey, Victorian bonnet, and corsets as uncom- 
 promising and unmistakable as a picket-fence. 
 
 Yes, they were undoubtedly British, the old 
 lady especially so. What more were they ? That 
 was the matter that puzzled me. Cristina was 
 not the ordinary pretty girl ; not even the ordinary 
 pretty girl with a ' ' disappointment ' ' to give her 
 character and single her out. There was some- 
 thing . . . something else. . . . 
 
 What had Mrs. Van Cloon's greeting meant ? 
 Why was Miss Raye called the "Kris-Girl?" 
 Kris in Malay, means dagger, the pronunciation 
 being not quite " Kriss " and not quite " Krees," 
 but something between the two. Was it a play on 
 her name ? It was a bad play, if that were the 
 case Cristina is undoubtedly " Criss." Had she* 
 any special interest in the national weapon of 
 Malaysia ? I did not think so. They had brought 
 krises on board for sale early in the trip modern 
 German rubbish, got up to sell ; plain Sheffield 
 stuff ; one or two real old Celebes weapons, made 
 of native hammered iron. I had bought a couple 
 as curios. I did not recollect that Miss Raye had 
 bought any, or even looked at the weapons. 
 
 I shot a glance at her as she sat there by my
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 19 
 
 side, handling the reins of the fiery little Macassar 
 horse with an easy, almost careless touch. She 
 wore a gown that was very soft and dainty, and 
 very white ; she had a little silver belt about her 
 little waist ; her face was shaded by a broad- 
 leaved, Watteau-sheplierdess sort of hat. She looked 
 very young and very simple to be the owner of 
 such a nickname. . . . Before I knew what I was 
 doing I had asked right out 
 
 " Why do they call you Kris-Girl ? " 
 "They don't," said Cristma calmly. " Prem- 
 pooan-Kris is the word." 
 
 " But. that's what it means ? " 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, what does it signify in itself ? " 
 " It might amuse you to guess." She sparkled 
 a little, and turned her bright small face towards 
 me. We were bouncing very fast along an avenue 
 of great forest trees, with green ostrich -feather- 
 shaped leaves and flowers of geranium scarlet, 
 alternated with trees that carried not a single leaf 
 but massed themselves against the sky in enormous 
 domes of brightest heliotrope bloom. The ground 
 beneath the horses' hoofs was thick with fallen 
 flowers. A good way off, at the end of the avenue, 
 you could see the bay of Goonong Kuda, like a 
 sheet of blue crystal, surrounded by mountains of 
 blue velvet. The gold and the green and the red 
 and the purple, the smiting diamond brilliance of 
 the sun, the scents and splendour of the whole 
 thing, almost took my breath away. But Cristma
 
 20 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 looked at it all very coolly ; she was not new to 
 the colour-show of the equatorial lands, as I was. 
 
 " I'll tell you something," she said, as we drew 
 up in a valley of darkly canopied rubber. ' ' You are 
 to take me to call somewhere to-morrow. On a 
 bachelor. An attractive bachelor, just at the 
 age when Balzac says that " 
 
 " Hold on about Balzac," I interrupted gloomily. 
 " I'm not so very much below that age myself, as 
 not to know that Balzac was just whistling to keep 
 his courage up, when he said what he did." 
 
 " Very well, then. To call on a bachelor who 
 is attractive, whatever his age. Planter in a small 
 way. Lives near here. A great friend of Mrs. 
 Van Cloon, and has some mystery about him ; she 
 won't say what it is, but I'm to go and see, and 
 then I'll understand everything. And you're to 
 go too, because she thinks dear Ash is unsym- 
 pathetic." 
 
 "All right, Miss Kris-Girl," I said. "I'm be- 
 ginning to see a little light." 
 
 We had to get out of the sulkies at this point, 
 and go over the greater part of the plantation, 
 marshalled by Mrs. Van Cloon. I need hardly 
 tell you of all we saw the tapping of the trees, 
 the milky sap running into neat tin vessels ; the 
 coagulating in long, tidy sheds, by means of 
 but you wouldn't care to hear it interested me 
 very much, and I could give you all the chemical 
 formulae, still ... I asked Cristina how she liked 
 it, and she said the smell of the smoke-houses
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 21 
 
 was lovely, and reminded her of Red Indian stories. 
 Also, she took certain specimen balls of rubber 
 and bounced them in her hands, and did amazing 
 tricks with them ; she seemed to have the eyes 
 and fingers of Cinquevalli. She shied away with 
 determination from all attempts to explain me- 
 chanical details, but I thought she enjoyed herself 
 on the whole. As for Mrs. Van Cloon, she stalked 
 like Semiramis through plantation, manufactory, 
 drying-sheds and stores, ordering about the silent, 
 swift Malay workmen, showing processes and 
 results, discussing percentages, investments, ex- 
 penses, returns, with the tones of a cathedral bell, 
 and the gestures of a caryatid come to life. It 
 interested me extremely. Rubber has not been 
 one of our specialities, but one never knows and 
 it was a pleasure in itself to hear a woman discourse 
 so ably upon business matters. The place was 
 paying splendidly, too ; I could not have picked 
 a hole in the management, except a tendency to- 
 wards cutting expenses almost over-finely. There 
 was a Malay overseer, but Mrs. Van Cloon managed 
 for herself. 
 
 More and more I puzzled over the contradictions 
 of the place. I would have sworn that Mrs. Van 
 Cloon was naturally no screw ; her cheerful 
 hospitality to us would have proved that, had 
 proof been wanting. She was making good money 
 with the plantation ; her needs were small ; she 
 had, as she told us in a burst of confidence, neither 
 chick nor child, and not a relation whom she valued
 
 22 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 at twopence halfpenny. Where did all the money 
 go ? It was of course no affair of mine ; but, as 
 a business man, I could not help wondering. Here 
 and there I could see places where money ought 
 to have been laid out, and was not. I ventured 
 to speak of one. The widow listened to me, 
 nodded her head goodnaturedly, thanked me 
 and said she wished to God she could afford it. 
 Then she dismissed the subject and called 
 " Jonges ! " in a tone that Clara Butt might have 
 envied, and the boy came running up with the 
 sulkies, and we drove home. 
 
 Next afternoon, the sulkies came round again, 
 and we started off for what proved to be a fairly 
 extended drive, along a shaded forest track. The 
 place was full of magnificent butterflies, like floating 
 flowers ; parrots, painted in all the colours of 
 Joseph's coat, flew squawking in and out of the 
 trees ; once and again a furry, mocking little 
 monkey face peered down and disappeared. It was 
 atrociously hot, but Mrs. Ash, whom I was driving, 
 looked as dry and cool as a chip. More in order 
 to make conversation than anything else, I asked 
 her what she had thought of the rubber plantation. 
 
 " Didn't look at it," she said woodenly. 
 
 " Don't you like that kind of thing ? " I asked. 
 
 " My good man," replied the old lady, in a 
 sudden spate of communicativeness, " I like 
 London, Kensington, coal fires, and concerts at 
 the Albert Hall."
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 23 
 
 " Then why " I began. 
 
 " Because one must earn one's salary honestly. 
 Play the game, as they say now-a-days. It's in 
 the job. Seeing things, I mean. Liking them 
 isn't in the bargain. I hate 'em. Hate mountains, 
 lakes, castles, Swiss railways, gondolas, Buddhist 
 ruins, mines, plantations, savages, hate steamers, 
 hate hotels, hate travelling." 
 
 " Good gracious ! " was all I found to say. 
 
 "But I'm honest," she went on. "I'm paid 
 well, and I earn it. I'm worth any money. You 
 can't get a chaperon like me now-a-days. There 
 aren't any real old ladies left. They wear wavy 
 brown wigs with a spring inside. And a touch of 
 pink, and some white on the top. And corsets 
 down to their knees. And heels and hats. Look 
 at me real bonnet with strings, grey hair grown 
 on my own head, elastic boots and stays that are just 
 stays. Cristina knows I'm worth all she can give. 
 It's not in the job that I'm to take an interest, but 
 I have to go and see, with her. Seen the Kremlin, 
 Taj Mahal, Boro Bodoor, Rio Harbour, Pyramids, 
 Sphinx, Niagara, Victoria Falls, wistaria festival 
 in Japan, Chinese New Year in Canton, Brittany 
 Kermesse, Panama Canal, Midnight Sun. Don't 
 remember twopence ha'penny-worth of the lot, 
 don't want to. Been out hunting nasty tigers on 
 the back of a nasty elephant. Been camping in 
 disgusting damp jungles full of dirty lions. Got 
 two more years of it, and then I'll go back to my 
 decent home in Kensington, and buy it own it
 
 24 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 live there. Never take a ticket as far as Brighton 
 again." 
 
 " Why two years ? " I asked. 
 
 " Cristina wants to travel for five, and we've 
 only done three," was the mystifying answer. 
 
 " What's that f or ? " I asked unashamedly ; 
 and Mrs. Ash, biting her words off as we bumped 
 faster and faster in chase of the sulky ahead, 
 replied : 
 
 " Wouldn't tell if I knew, but I don't. Some 
 fad. Cristina can be close. I respect her for it. 
 Everyone knows about her fianc&s dreadful death 
 three years ago bitten by a mad dog, and died 
 snapping and howling. She doesn't take it as 
 well as you'd think, even yet. Never has that 
 ring off, night or day, in her bath or out of it." 
 
 " That curious old ring, like a long marquise ? " 
 
 " Yes. Chinese toe-ring really. I've never 
 seen her without it ; she had it when we first met. 
 She started travelling just after he died, and 
 nothing can stop her since. Five years I'm 
 engaged for, and I'll go through with it, if it kills 
 me. She pays well. And she's a good girl. And 
 as for cleverness, she's got a great deal more than 
 any girl's got any business to have." 
 
 "Why do they call her that odd name ? " I 
 was utterly ashamed of myself, but could not stop 
 asking questions. 
 
 " The Kris-Girl ? Malay name ; she's become 
 quite celebrated since we began travelling, for 
 what the natives here call cutting knots. Give
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 25 
 
 Cristina something to disentangle that nobody 
 else can make head or tail of, and see her cut it 
 clear with a sweep. She's wonderful. Ought to 
 have been a diplomat's wife or a detective's. 
 Or something in a circus ; she can juggle with her 
 hands as well as with her head. But I don't hold 
 with any of it. In my time, girls who had lost 
 their lovers stayed at home, and took an interest 
 in the poor. A great deal more sensible, and more 
 refined, too. But Cristina's parents are dead, 
 and she does as she likes." 
 
 Mrs. Ash shut up like a tap that has been turned 
 off. I do not think she made ten consecutive 
 remarks in the whole of the next two days. 
 
 When we reached the end of the Van Cloon 
 estate which was a good way off the widow 
 descended from her sulky, and beckoned to Mrs. 
 Ash. 
 
 " You and I are going to stay here in the tea- 
 house, and wait," she said. " You can trust Miss 
 Raye in Mr. Garden's care, I'm certain sure." 
 
 " Got anything you want to show me ? " asked 
 Mrs. Ash, her elastic-sided boot hesitating on the 
 step. , 
 
 " I'm sorry I haven't anything to see here at 
 all nothing but the little tea-house that I " 
 
 " I'll stop," announced Mrs. Ash, bringing the 
 second boot after the first. Cristina and I drove 
 on. If I had had any capacity for astonishment 
 left in me, which I scarcely had by this time, I 
 might have been astonished to observe that Mrs.
 
 26 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Van Cloon entered the little rustic rest-house with 
 her handkerchief up to her eyes. 
 
 We bounced along for a while through sun 
 and shade, and then I asked despairingly, 
 
 " Is everybody mad ? or what is it all 
 about ? " 
 
 Cristina bubbled with laughter. Despite the 
 shadow that never quite seemed to leave the depths 
 of her eyes, she was a merry creature. 
 
 " I'll tell you every bit I know," she said. " I 
 have Mrs. Van Cloon's leave. She says you are 
 a ' fair treat,' and I gathered she meant to be 
 complimentary. Well in the first place, the 
 late Van Cloon was not a good husband ; he seems 
 to have been quite half mad with jealousy, and I 
 don't honestly believe that Mrs. Van ever gave 
 him cause. He kept her shut up here on the 
 plantation, and wouldn't let her go down to Macas- 
 sar more than about once a year. He used to 
 have parties of people staying, and then he liked 
 to see her dressed up gorgeously, and wearing 
 jewels, but he kept spying and watching about 
 her all the time. And by-and-by she cried when 
 she told me, poor dear someone came whom she 
 did care for very much. There's a mystery about 
 him ; she won't tell me, because she says I must 
 see him to understand. He lives on a tumble-down 
 little plantation near here, and she used to meet 
 him by chance in the forest." 
 
 " Sounds rather thin." 
 
 " Well, she says I'll understand when I see him
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 27 
 
 and anyhow there was no harm in it ; I would 
 swear to that." 
 
 " So would I, somehow I like the amazing 
 widow." 
 
 " Van Cloon got to know," went on Cristina, 
 " and there was a terrible row. He died soon 
 after and left a very unjust will. She was to have 
 the estate and income ; there are a lot of charges 
 to relations of his that reduce it a good deal, but 
 as you see, she's well off. If she re-marries, she 
 loses all but five hundred a year. If she marries 
 this man, she loses every guilder. Isn't it mean, 
 after she'd spent the best years of her life nursing 
 and taking care of the old villain ? " 
 
 " It all depends. The other man may be an 
 adventurer." 
 
 " That's what she thought I'd think, so she asked 
 me to go and see him. She wouldn't give me a 
 letter of introduction ; it's funny. She told me 
 just to say to him she was a friend of mine." 
 
 " What's his name, and who is he ? " 
 
 " English ; name Captain Ord." 
 
 " Ami}' or navy ? " I asked suddenly. 
 
 " Army," said Cristina. I whistled. Cristina was 
 too young yes, she undoubtedly was to remem- 
 ber about Ord of the Nilghiris, and his noble de- 
 fence of the British fort. What that defence had 
 cost him, I remembered now. ... So Ord of the 
 Xilghiris was living on " a tumble-down plantation ' ' 
 here at the end of the world, and my Cleopatra of 
 the rubber estate had been forbidden to marry him.
 
 28 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 "Do you know anything about him ? " asked 
 Cristina. 
 
 I was just going to tell her what I knew, when 
 something occurred that made speech unnecessary. 
 We had come to a boundary a well-made, hand- 
 some fence of posts and wire, cutting off the Van 
 Cloon estate from something that looked like a 
 half-redeemed wilderness on the other side. There 
 was a gate in the fence, and through that gate was 
 coming slowly, very slowly, an exceedingly tall 
 man dressed in a khaki shirt and trousers, belted 
 at the waist. The rough and ready costume showed 
 off to full advantage a magnificent figure, held 
 finely erect. The head was thrown somewhat 
 backwards, and the chin a little raised, in a listen- 
 ing attitude. Under the shade of the plantation 
 hat that sat upon the man's thick, grizzled hair, 
 one could see that his eyes were fixed upwards and 
 far ahead . . . yet here the dense high forest shut 
 in the track like a wall. 
 
 Cristina pulled up the horse, and the man in 
 the gateway moved forward, and called out " Who 
 is there ? " still with his head raised and his bright, 
 sword-grey eyes looking up at the forest roof. 
 No answer came at first, and he stretched out his 
 hands with the pathetic gesture that no one can 
 mistake. . . . 
 
 "Oh, poor thing, poor thing ! he's blind ! " 
 whispered Cristina with a sob in her voice ; and I 
 knew I cannot tell how that her pity was not 
 for the blind man before us, but for the rich lonely
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 29 
 
 woman in her empty palace, unable to share her 
 riches with the man who needed them and who 
 loved her. 
 
 That last item was a doubt solved for me in 
 the next few seconds. Cristina sprang from the 
 sulky, and walked towards the gate. Waves of 
 hope and fear chased each other visibly over the 
 face of the blind soldier as she came, settling down 
 into disappointment as soon as she spoke. 
 
 " Captain Ord, I am Miss Cristina Raye, and my 
 friend Mr. Garden is with me. We have come to 
 see your place, if we may." 
 
 Captain Ord's hat was already in his hand. 
 "I'm afraid there is nothing to see ; it is a very 
 poor little place," he said courteously. " But 
 come in by all means. Are you from the Juliana ? " 
 " We got left behind by her, and are staying 
 with Mrs. Van Cloon for a few days ; she has very 
 kindly put us up," replied Cristina. 
 
 The dark, lean face brightened suddenly. 
 "She's always kind," was all he said. "Ah- 
 met!" 
 
 A Malay appeared from nowhere in particular. 
 The captain delivered the sulky to him, and gave 
 some order in Malay. Then, walking with astonish- 
 ing certainty, he led the way through a wretched 
 unweeded patch of cacao trees to a small brown 
 house in a clearing. It was built of plaited bam- 
 boos, and furnished very poorly. I do not think 
 that it had more than two rooms. Here, under 
 the dusk of the deep-thatched roof, with the fierce
 
 30 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 white sunlight striking at us through the open 
 door, we sat on native-made chairs, and drank the 
 fresh coconuts brought by the Malay. I don't 
 believe there was a solitary other creature about 
 the place no wonder it looked unweeded and I 
 don't imagine there was anj^thing in the Chinese 
 box that served for a cupboard, except the dry 
 biscuits that the Captain produced for our refresh- 
 ment. 
 
 But the place was perfectly clean and tidy, and 
 Ord's own clothes, though old, were mended well. 
 The look that Ahmet cast upon his Tuan, when 
 bending down to serve him Avith a coconut, ex- 
 plained many things. I believe the Malay would 
 have died for his master. Well, many a man did 
 die for him, in that year of the forgotten eighteen- 
 nineties without saving Ord, after all, from some- 
 thing that was worse than swift and easy death. 
 
 When the coconuts were finished, Cristina 
 announced shamelessly that I was dying to look 
 at Captain Ord's cacao, and chased me out into 
 the hot sun, while she remained in the house with 
 her host. For the best part of an hour, I was left 
 to wander disconsolately about the weedy patches 
 of bush, pinching pods that seemed unlikely ever 
 to ripen, poking my head into the mean little 
 drying shed where half a dozen trays of beans lay 
 on a packing-case table, observing here and there 
 and everywhere the naked poverty of the place. 
 The plantation, I heard long after, had come to 
 Captain Ord, as payment of a bad debt, some few
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 31 
 
 years after his blindness. God alone knows what 
 disappointment, disillusion, faithlessness, had driven 
 him out of Europe into this forest hermitage. 
 Straining my memory, I could recollect something 
 about a Lady Aline Somebody. Whoever and 
 whatever she was, she had evidently failed him. 
 ... I could understand how the big-hearted 
 woman in Van Cloon's great palace had appealed 
 to him, in spite of her surface roughness even in 
 spite of the fact that he had never seen her beauty. 
 I could understand how she came upon him during 
 some of his wanderings in the forest how perhaps 
 she had led or helped him, in her compassionate 
 way the solitary, afflicted man. hungry for love. 
 . . . Yes, I saw the story, plain man of commerce 
 as I am. 
 
 When Cristina came out, she was very silent, 
 but her eyes sparkled and her little mouth was 
 tight. Mrs. Van Cloon and she exchanged some 
 mysterious feminine signal as we joined them, and 
 they had a long talk after we got in. I noticed 
 that the widow was unusually bright that evening. 
 
 Tropical houses, even when built of marble, are 
 treacherous regarding secrets, because everyone 
 lives out of doors on the verandah. Drives or 
 walks offer the only possible chance for private 
 conversations. That is why I could not help 
 hearing something that was not meant for me, as 
 we all lay in long chairs upon the marble terrace 
 after dinner, watching the fireflies dance among 
 the orange blooms below. Mrs. Van Cloon was
 
 32 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 some way off, but marble carries sound almost like 
 water. 
 
 " I've saved and scrimped," I heard. " I've 
 saved on iny very back and belly, so I have not a 
 new dress for two years, and not even a pudding 
 for dinner when I'm alone but all I can do, with 
 the charges on the estate, I can't save enough out 
 of the income to make a capital we could live on, 
 for another five or six years. And oh, my dear, 
 my dear, time's creeping upon me like the tide 
 I'm getting old. . . . And he all alone. ..." 
 
 " Beast ! " was Cristina's reply. Mrs. Van Cloon 
 seemed to place the epithet where it belonged, 
 without any difficulty, for she went on " 
 
 " Yes, that's what he was and me slaving and 
 nursing all those years without looking at another 
 man, so much as to see whether he'd got two legs 
 and a head on him or not except. . . . And as for 
 these quiet-looking Dutch, you know what they 
 really are, my dear, and the amount of keeping 
 off they take " 
 
 It seemed Cristina did know, for I thought I 
 heard her giggle. 
 
 " So there's how it is, and sometimes I wish I 
 had the pluck to go and jump into the Goonong 
 Kuda Bay, and a' done with it all. But while he's 
 alive " 
 
 Handkerchiefs came out here, and I woke up 
 rather late to the necessity of coughing or of 
 scraping my chair. I did both. Followed a good 
 deal of whispering ; at the end, Mrs. Van Cloon
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 33 
 
 kissed Cristina with some violence, rose and 
 withdrew. 
 
 " I'm going to pack twelve clean chemises this 
 very minute," I heard her say. 
 
 A coastal steamer called next day, and with it 
 Mrs. Van Cloon went down to Macassar, leaving 
 us three in charge of the plantation. Before she 
 went, she asked me to help her in making out a 
 complete statement of the expenses and profits of 
 the plantation for the previous year. This she 
 took with her, together with a copy of her late 
 husband's will. She also took three feathered 
 hats designed to strike with amazement the Hooge 
 Pad at driving time, and a box that contained, I 
 suppose, the necessaries she had mentioned, to- 
 gether with some others. Cristina and I stood on 
 the verandah and cheered her as she went. Mrs. 
 Ash, her elastic-sided boots well in view, and a 
 genuine 1870 cap on her head, sat knitting warm 
 vests for North Sea Fishermen, underneath the 
 biggest of the electric punkahs. She did not 
 feign any interest whatever in the events proceed- 
 ing. Doubtless she considered such interest " not 
 in the bargain." 
 
 " Now," said the Kris-Girl, leading me into the 
 central hall and selecting two chairs, " sit down, 
 and I will tell you my story. . . . Isn't it exactly 
 like an Adelphi play ? Even the chairs are the 
 right pattern, with all those gilt legs. Well, I 
 believe I've cut Mrs. Van Cloon's knot about 
 through." 
 3
 
 34 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Good for you," I said. 
 
 "Have you noticed," asked Cristina, rather 
 dreamily, " that when people want anything in 
 the world very, very, very much, they " 
 
 " Hold on, Kris-Girl, I have noticed. I didn't 
 either, you see." 
 
 " Or," she went on, small hands round small 
 silken knee, clear eyes looking up at the gaudy 
 crystal chandelier " if there's anything they 
 have that they like very, very, very much, some- 
 thing comes between, and takes it away. . . . 
 And there are knots and nets and tangles. Always ; 
 it's a law." 
 
 She stopped a minute, and (I knew) ranged back 
 over the past. How do I know ? . Because I did 
 too. 
 
 "It's another law," she went on, "that you 
 can't help yourself or hardly ever. But you 
 can help other people, if you are a little less stupid 
 than they are. For most people are stupid, you 
 know ; Carlyle was so right in that. Well there's 
 been a lot of stupidity over this matter. And it 
 can be cleared away I think." 
 
 " I must be stupid myself," I said. " For I 
 can't see where any possible hope comes in. The 
 will is good. Lots of married men make wills like 
 it, and they're never overthrown that I know of." 
 
 "And yet!" said Cristina, "perhaps lots of 
 them might have got over the difficulty. Because 
 it was so simple in this case. I really do think 
 you must be stupid ; most nice people are. I'll
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 35 
 
 have to tell you. When I came back from that 
 visit to the poor thing in the forest, I thought 
 hard all the way home you know I told you not 
 to speak to me and that night I got up at one 
 o'clock, and went for a walk, round and round the 
 terrace that's the way I think when I have to 
 think hard. And Ash would get up and walk too, 
 because she said it was what she was paid for ; 
 but she never said a word, only once or twice she 
 whispered the names of the Metropolitan Tube 
 stations over to herself like an incantation, and 
 three times she yawned. So in an hour or so 
 I saw it all, and I came in. 
 
 " What I said to myself was ' Who benefits ? ' 
 Because that is what you must ask in everything, 
 not only in crimes people are so stupid about 
 that. And would you believe, the answer was, 
 ' No one does.' ' 
 
 " How ? " 
 
 "I mean, that no one benefits as things ; re. 
 Not Mrs. Van Cloon, not Captain Ord, not the 
 people to whom the money would go. And then 
 I asked I don't pretend to give you the processes, 
 only the results ' Who would benefit ? ' That is, 
 if she married him. And the answer was, of 
 course, ' The other inheritors.' Therefore they 
 must be anxious for her to marry him. But she 
 can't without money. Therefore, they must 
 provide it it is to their interest. ... So then I 
 saw the whole thing. You can't believe how simple 
 most things are, when you cut away the mass of
 
 36 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 stupidity that accumulates round them. I asked 
 her who were the people who would get the money. 
 She said that her husband's relations would, if she 
 remarried ; if she did not, she could do what she 
 liked with it, so long as she gave none of it to 
 Captain Ord you see, he had provided against 
 that. Now of course, being Colonial Dutch, they 
 are desperately money-hungry. So I said to her, 
 ' Go to them. Say just this " If you'll buy the 
 estate from me for fifty thousand pounds, you can 
 have it to-morrow. It's worth a hundred and 
 fifty thousand, and if you wait for me to marry 
 Captain Ord or anyone else, you'll never get it, 
 for I couldn't marry him, and wouldn't marry any 
 other man. So this is your chance." Just that. 
 Then you see, when one asks the question, ' Who 
 benefits ? ' one gets a new answer. She does, and 
 he does, and they do. So the knot comes in pieces. 
 At least, I hope so." 
 
 "Kris-Girl, it does sound simple," I said. 
 " Without doubt I am stupid." 
 
 " Oh no, not a bit more than anyone else," she 
 said consolingly. " The trouble with most people 
 is that they can't see facts that are staring them 
 i \ the face. Can't get the focus of them have 
 looked at them too close. . . . Come and have a 
 game of billiards." 
 
 " Come and let you walk all over me at billiards, 
 you mean," I said. " Well, if it makes you 
 happy ..."
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 37 
 
 In the absence of Mrs. Van Cloon, we spent a 
 pleasant time enough. There were horses, and 
 Cristina and I went many drives rides were 
 tabooed, on account of that necessity of earning 
 her money fairly, which seemed to press so hard 
 upon Mrs. Ash, I could have wished myself that 
 she had not been quite so fiercely honest. She 
 evidently hated bumping about the grass roads in 
 buggies and sulkies only a shade less than she 
 hated the various sights we went to see ; but 
 nothing short of an attack of bubonic plague would 
 have kept her from making one of the party. 
 Cristina seemed used to her ways, but I must say 
 it got upon my nerves a little at times, to see the 
 old lady, as British-looking as the lions in Trafalgar 
 Square, making a God-Save-the-Queen effect with 
 her bonnet and her knitting and her elastic boots, 
 in the middle of some exotic kampong full of 
 piratical-looking Malay fishermen, and palms, and 
 wild little naked children. There was a Chinese 
 temple in a neighbouring town, that really turned 
 out to be a wonder of wonders I still dream some- 
 times at night of its incredible fagade and sky- 
 piercing ornaments, dragons, goblins, ten-foot 
 centipedes, ducks, tigers, fruits, faces, flowers, all 
 made in coloured and enamelled china, and standing 
 out in screaming relief against a heaven of sun- 
 steeped blue ; I fancy I see its weirdly exquisite 
 bronzes, its grinning, sea-sick lions, its wonderful 
 gateway leading to a still green garden just one 
 huge circular opening in the wall ; try it, and
 
 38 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 marvel at the effect. . . . Upon these things, and 
 all other-" sights," of that district of Celebes, Mrs. 
 Ash shed the withering blight of her utter indiffer- 
 ence. She sat on the pedestal of an idol, and 
 knitted hard, all through our visit to the temple ; 
 even when the chief Chinese dignitary of the 
 quarter and Chinese dignitaries can be exceed- 
 ingly impressive appeared suddenly in scarlet 
 satin over blue and gold silk, knelt down at the 
 head of a retinue of splendid followers, and bumped 
 his lordly forel.ead three times on the steps of the 
 principal altar . Mrs. Ash merely turned a corner 
 in her work and murmured softly : " Knit twenty ; 
 purl eighteen. And the same again." 
 
 The Jvliarta returned, and the captain ro 'e up 
 to Mrs Van Cloon's to apologise for having deserted 
 us. It was a case of leaving us or losing the ship, 
 he said. (Like all the captains of the K.P.M., he 
 spoke amazingly perfect English besides Dutch, 
 French, German, and Malay.) He was grieved 
 beyond all expression (thank you, he would take 
 a very little), but it had been some comfort to him 
 to know that our charming and hospitable hostess 
 was close to the landing, and would be sure to take 
 us in. He was again grieved beyond expression 
 (a mere spoonful, please) to hear that Mrs. Van 
 Cloon had gone to Macassar. Should he have 
 the pleasure of taking us on board again ? 
 
 We were unanimous in agreeing to deprive him 
 of that happiness. Wild Commissioners would 
 not have shifted Miss Raye or mj'self, before
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 39 
 
 hearing the result of the widow's high emprize ; 
 and as for Mrs. Ash, nothing in heaven or earth 
 or sea would have shifted her (and quite rightly) 
 from her duties as chaperon. 
 
 A few days later, the Macassar boat bellowed 
 down at the landing place, and a hurried Jonges 
 slammed horses into a buggy, and bounced away 
 down the grass drive. Mrs. Van Cloon was return- 
 ing. 
 
 She descended from the buggy like an Amazon 
 queen stepping forth from her chariot ; the light 
 of victory shone on her face, and irradiated the 
 very plume of her Paris hat made, I fear, strictly 
 for export from Paris, on the same principle that 
 governs the export of German bands from music- 
 loving Germany. We had not time to ask her how 
 she had fared. She threw the reins to the Jonges, 
 made three steps into the hall, and enveloped 
 Cristina in a smothering embrace. 
 
 " You darling," she said. 
 
 " Then you've won ? " asked Cristina, as soon 
 as the widow's affectionate clutch had relaxed 
 enough to allow her to speak. 
 
 Mrs. Van Cloon nodded, and sank into a chair. 
 It was one of the awful musical-box chairs, and it 
 immediately began tinkling out : 
 
 " When Johnny comes marching home, my boys hurrah, 
 
 hurrah ! 
 
 We'll give him a hearty welcome, boys hurrah, 
 hurrah ! " 
 
 I could not stand it, and collapsed, weakly laugh-
 
 40 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 ing, on another chair, which at once started 
 proclaiming that " Champagne Charley was its 
 name." It seemed to suggest an idea to Mrs. Van 
 Cloon ; she called loudly 
 
 " Jongesf Champagne mintaf" The two chairs 
 played on ; I could not get up for laughing, 
 and Mrs. Van Cloon, after giving her order, seemed 
 totally unaware that the rival musical boxes were 
 fighting it out under her person and mine. Cristina, 
 with what I must think was malice afore- 
 thought, sat down on the third musical chair, and 
 when the strains of " Hold the Fort " were added 
 to the cat-concert already proceeding, I became 
 almost hysterical. Mrs. Ash, dry, chip-like, and 
 unmoved, sat reading in a corner. I saw the title 
 of her pamphlet ; it was The Garden in De- 
 cember. The boy trotted in with champagne. 
 
 " Let me give you some, Mrs. Ash and Miss 
 Raye," pleaded our hostess. The chairs answered 
 forcibly, together, 
 
 " Wave the answer back to heaven, 
 By thy grace we '11 all get blind drunk, when Johnny 
 conies marching home ! " 
 
 Mrs. Van Cloon got up with a tray in her hand ; 
 Cristina rose too, and as I jumped to take the 
 glasses, the chairs snapped off on 
 
 " See the mighty host advancing, Satan is my name ! " 
 
 Mrs. Ash refused champagne politely. 
 "I find it goes to the head," she said, with the 
 air of one enunciating a newly discovered fact of
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 41 
 
 nature. Cristina took some I think out of 
 politeness. I poured myself a glass, because I felt 
 I really wanted it. 
 
 "There, drink it down," said Mrs. Van Cloon 
 kindly. " It lies easy on the stomach at any hour 
 of the day." She did not inquire the reason of 
 my untimely mirth, being apparently of the 
 opinion of George Eliot's "Dolly," that "men 
 were made so." 
 
 " To Mrs. Ord ! " I said, and drank. Cristina re- 
 peated the toast. The future Mrs. Ord acknow- 
 ledged it by a few tears, and a completely blissful 
 giggle. 
 
 " Oh, my dears and my dears ! " she said, sitting 
 down again not on "Johnny" or "Champagne 
 Charley " this time ; I saw to that, for my ribs 
 were shaken almost loose from my spine " I've 
 done it thanks to the Kris-Girl ! They've given 
 in. They hated to but the money fascinated 
 them that much that they couldn't help them- 
 selves ! You should have heard them argue 
 there was one old cow of a notary who wanted 
 but there it's done, and I'm a free woman, or will 
 be just as soon as they can get the legal papers 
 through. And Ord and me, we'll go down to 
 Gippsland by the first boat we can catch, and I've 
 got a buyer for his plantation who'll give him 
 enough to provide him in pocket-money anyhow, 
 the dear, and if any of you ever come to Victoria, 
 and leave it without seeing us " 
 
 " I can answer for myself," I said. " I've had
 
 42 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 the time of my life here." 1 looked at Oistina as 
 I spoke, but she did not seem to see me. She was 
 standing by the "Champagne Charley" chair 
 examining its mechanism. 
 
 " Have you," I said to her, determined to make 
 her notice me but she suddenly sat down on one 
 of the other chairs, and my sentence was broken 
 off by 
 
 " We'll all get blind drunk, when Johnny comes marching 
 home ! " 
 
 The next Macassar boat left in a week We saw 
 very little of Mrs. Van Cloon during that time ; 
 she seemed to live on the road between her own 
 property and the Captain's, and when in the house, 
 occupied herself chiefly in reading Singapore 
 drapery catalogues, and writing letters with 
 cheques in them. When the steamer left, she 
 pressed a splendid diamond brooch on Cristina, 
 and wept over and kissed her to such an extent 
 that the little lady vanished altogether in her 
 mighty embrace. 
 
 "Ash, you take this bit of vanity," said Cris- 
 tina, as we steamed out of Goonong Kuda Bay. 
 " Couldn't refuse, but you know I don't like that 
 sort of thing." 
 
 " I will take it, thank you," said the old lady, 
 fastening it in her dress. " It'll buy me a 
 bath with hot and cold water, and a good kitchen 
 range. . ." She looked back at the vanishing island 
 with relief.
 
 THE RUBBER QUEEN 43 
 
 " Another place seen and done with,* she said, 
 and turned down into the social hall. 
 
 Cristina was hanging over the rail looking at 
 the blue water layered with streaming gold. I 
 heard her quote something from Kipling, half 
 under her breath : 
 
 " Can him wlw helps others help himself ? answer 
 me that, sorr." 
 
 And I, too, went below and left her.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 
 
 So we sailed away, and sailed on up the coast 
 of Celebes. 
 
 Our new steamer, the Halmaheira, was as like 
 the Juliana as one coconut is like another, and 
 just as amazing, viewed as a product of the utmost 
 ends of the earth. Cristina Raye voiced her 
 feelings on the subject, as we thudded steadily 
 along a blue, mountainous coast of wonderful love- 
 liness, inhabited only by wild-looking Malays. 
 
 " Look at the place on the map," she said, 
 " think about it at home it's so remote and im- 
 possible that you don't believe it really exists, 
 till you've taken a ticket to it why, Borneo's a 
 synonymous term for wildness and out-of-the- 
 wayness, and this is a step further on. You think 
 you'll paddle up the coast in a canoe, guarding 
 yourself against pirates with two revolvers in your 
 belt, a rifle over your shoulder, and a knife in your 
 teeth and you find things like Atlantic liners 
 going up and down about twice a week with forty- 
 one courses for lunch " 
 
 44
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 45 
 
 " It couldn't have been forty-one," I remon- 
 strated. We were tramping up and down the 
 promenade deck at 3 p.m., I think, with the view 
 of cnnoying the siesta folk. We felt I did, at 
 any rate that they had no business to be having 
 siestas. Whoever has suffered as the business 
 man in the Farthest East must suffer, through 
 that confounded habit kept up by the local whites 
 of going to sleep every day from one o'clock till 
 five, will sympathise with me. 
 
 " It was," said Cristina, with determination. 
 " If you count all the things handed round on 
 the rice- table. I am tasting six new ones every 
 day, to see what they are like. To-day it was 
 that thing that looks like fried worms I think it 
 is, by the way and bits of inside buffalo skin, and 
 the cleanings of fish in oil, and pieces of cuttle- 
 fish tentacles, and crabs' legs I don't really 
 think it was tarantula and something that 
 tasted as if one had eaten a set piece of fire- 
 works just after it was touched off. There are 
 eighteen more things to try, but I've given up. 
 To-morrow I mean to ask " 
 
 " M inta a jam, telor, dan ikan sadja," I inter- 
 rupted in fluent Malay. 
 
 "Right," said Cristina, nodding. "I wanted 
 to know why they had that phrase in the conver- 
 sation book, and now I've found out. All the 
 tourists begin like me, and all end in the same 
 way. ' Bring me only chicken, eggs, and fish.' 
 I suppose they don't want to die till they've
 
 46 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 had the value of their ticket. It is quite pathe- 
 tic." 
 
 " Phrase books generally are, except when 
 they're tragic," I said. " Listen to this series 
 'I won't do it.' 'I won't give it.' 'I don't 
 want it.' ' That's enough.' ' It is no use bother- 
 ing me any more.' ' Be off.' ' 
 
 " Oh, that's tragedy remember the harbour of 
 Macassar ? " said Cristina with a laugh. I 
 did remember ; I thought we were getting on 
 pretty well. When two travellers begin to ask 
 each other '' D> you remember?" they are 
 already on the way to friendship.- I was quite 
 clear in my mind that I wanted to be friends with 
 Miss Cristina Raye. 
 
 Friends ? Yes. I was sure that I meant no 
 more. Because, you see, I was nearly forty, and 
 she could not be more than twenty-five or so, and 
 everyone knew that she was inconsolable for the 
 loss of her fiance, and I had always supposed, 
 when I had time to think about it, that I was 
 inconsolable for the loss of mine this fifteen years 
 or more. 
 
 I thought of her, deliberately, as we thudded on 
 up the far strange coasts of Celebes of Mabel, 
 born in '75, and dead in '93 Mabel, the pretty 
 creature who wore a "f;inge" and a bustle, 
 did not like the " new woman " (Lord ! where 
 has the phrase hidden itself, these latter days ?) 
 and who was not certain about fin-de-siede man- 
 ners" Mabel, the dear little soul who had
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 47 
 
 never been further than Scotland in her life, and 
 who was quite sure that no " really nice girl," 
 when in London, would go outside a bus or drive 
 in a hansom cab. . . . 
 
 I remembered the lad who had been so pleased 
 and proud to put the ring on her finger . . . and my 
 thoughts drifted off from Mabel for a moment. 
 Something hummed in my brain something of 
 Stevenson's 
 
 " Sing me a tale of a lad that is gone 
 Say, could that lad be I ? ... 
 Give me again all that was there, 
 Give me the sun that shone, 
 Give me the eyes, give me the soul, 
 Give me the lad that's gone ! " 
 
 It goes to the tune of " Over the Sea to Skye." 
 I found myself humming the air as I leaned on 
 the rail, watching the thunder-blue ranges of 
 Celebes slip by, and seeing them scarce at all. 
 And Cristina, standing beside me, took up the air, 
 and sang in the tiniest voice not " Skye," but 
 Stevenson's much less widely known refrain. 
 
 " How did you know ? " I asked her, turning 
 from Celebes to her. But she only smiled. 
 
 " Was she very pretty ? " she asked. 
 
 "Yes, sorceress," I said. "She was. Like a 
 flower or a small, soft bird. She wasn't meant to 
 stand the storms of life, and she didn't." 
 
 The Halmaheira thudded on ; the beat of her 
 engines echoed against the cliffs ; the silky-blue 
 water hissed beneath her forefoot.
 
 48 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " I'm sorry," said Cristina, and I knew she 
 meant it. We fell silent. I wondered if confi- 
 dence were to be exchanged for confidence if in 
 return, I was to hear anything about 
 
 I looked at her, and saw that I was not. She 
 was far away from me ; yes, very far. Her face 
 was pale, and her eyes were looking I know 
 
 " Beyond the clouds, and beyond the tomb." 
 
 I slipped away, and went forward to the smoking 
 saloon. I was thinking very hard about no, you 
 are quite wrong about the gum damar trade. 
 
 " There's a lot of it in the Minahassa," I said to 
 myself. " Quite a lot. We shall get to Menado 
 the day after to-morrow. I will leave the ship 
 there, and travel round a bit. It might pay me, 
 as things are going in the markets just now." 
 
 I have always hated Menado. 
 
 I was there only a week or two ; and the town 
 is an extremely pretty one ; and the residents are 
 friendly, and the climate is fairty good, but 
 
 Anyhow, I hate it. I have a right to hate any 
 part of the earth's surface that I choose, and I 
 choose to hate Menado. And the Minahassa. If 
 you want to know what the Minahassa is, I shall 
 not tell you. You have got an atlas, and you can 
 look it up. I am not paid to teach you geography. 
 
 There is something detestable about long. 1 ng 
 roads, very well kept and edged with shady trees 
 all nicely clipped and about scores and scores 
 of native residences, set down in the midst of over-
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 49 
 
 flowing green ; houses built in a fashion half 
 European, half Malay, and filled with merry, fat, 
 prosperous people who are any blend you like to 
 mention except plain white. I can't see why 
 people should be happy in droves in thousands 
 driving about all day in pony karettas which they 
 shouldn't be able to afford, and giggling inanely 
 with each other ; filling the wide quiet streets 
 and the long, long, long roadways with a flutter 
 of muslin arid a gleam of oiled hair and flowers, 
 and with laughter of small fat children, and jokes 
 of sarong-cl&d young men. The Dutch residents 
 have such pretentious villas, too, stone and brick, 
 and sometimes marble in part with such garden- 
 ing about them, and avenues, and stoeps 
 where ladies from Holland make embroidery and 
 drink coffee and chat, happily and contentedly. 
 
 Pretentious that was what I felt it all to be. 
 The hotels were pretentious, with their marble 
 halls and electric lights and crowds of merry 
 people having dinner and the motor-cars, pant- 
 ing up and down the long roads with cargoes of 
 Dutch tourists going to Tondano and Limboto 
 Lakes and the Chinese bazaar, and the harbour. 
 
 Especially the harbour. Those two great over- 
 hanging volcanoes, the Klabat and the Lokon, 
 smoking away above the town, had an effect that 
 seemed to me unbearably theatrical. The whole 
 thing was like a drop scene in a pantomime. And 
 the canoes paddling up and down with fruit and 
 fish and beggars all the beggars in Malaysia, 
 4
 
 50 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 which means almost everyone, go about in canoes 
 it was a nuisance from beginning to end. 
 
 And people laughed at such silly things. There 
 was an English bagman : he came back to the 
 hotel one day crowing with laughter, and insisted 
 on explaining what it was all about as if anyone 
 wished to know. He had seen a canoe paddled 
 by a Buginese-pirate sort of person without any 
 clothes, and had noted that the craft had a name 
 painted on it. And he had read the name. And 
 it was " SHERLOX HOLM." And the unclothed 
 heathen had explained that this was the name of 
 a hero exceedingly celebrated in Malaysia since 
 some kind Tuan had translated his doings into 
 Malay ; that all the people had the translation, 
 and they liked it better than the Koran or the Bible. 
 Asked why, he explained that there were so many 
 ways of stealing in it, and it taught people to steal 
 cleverly. And that he was a Buddhist, when he 
 did not happen to be going to the Dutch Mission 
 church, and that he had quite frequently burned 
 sticks of incense and red paper in the porcelain 
 temple at the other side of the town, in honour 
 of Sir Doyle, that saint of far-off countries who 
 had written the book. 
 
 Did anyone ever hear such childish nonsense ? 
 Possibly it was true in fact, I think it was but 
 who cared whether it was or not ? 
 
 I left the giggling commercial on the stoep, 
 and went off to my own room. It looked like a 
 prison cell furnished with unusual luxury, and
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 51 
 
 smelt like a swimming-bath most rooms in Dutch- 
 Malayan hotels are like that : they build them of 
 concrete and tiles, usually with one barred window 
 some twenty feet up from the floor, and they hose 
 them down every day as if you were small-pox 
 or scarlet fever. Still, it was a refuse, and there 
 were no commercial travellers there. I lit a pipe, 
 and sat down on the edge of my vast Dutch bed 
 (apparently the Dutch expect you to bring your 
 entire family with you, and house it under the one 
 mosquito net) with a paper of notes on the trade 
 of Celebes, which I wanted to look over. I did 
 not care a trouser button about the trade of 
 Celebes, but I was quite aware that I ought to care. 
 
 And then I got a steamer time-table, and began 
 calculating when the Halmaheira would meet the 
 Timor, and on what date the Timor would get to 
 Ternate, and what boat would go on to the 
 Moluccas. 
 
 No, I wasn't going to the Moluccas. I just 
 looked them up because I wanted to look them 
 up. There was no harm in that. And one had 
 to distract one's mind somehow or other from such 
 a hateful place as Menado and the Minahassa. 
 
 Did I mention, by the way, that Mrs. Ash and 
 Cristina were travelling by the Timor ? 
 
 If I thought for a moment you would look up 
 Celebes on the map, I would ask you to do so ; but 
 I know you will not. You and I are alike. When 
 they tell me, in a story, that " it is important the
 
 52 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 reader should remember the second passage 
 branched off from the left before one came to Sir 
 Jasper's room, and that this second passage was 
 parallel for about ten yards with the staircase 
 leading from the kitchen. This staircase turned 
 round on its way to the second floor, and the 
 reader will understand, by consulting the appended 
 diagram, that Lady Gladys's maid was able, her- 
 self unseen, to view the" etc. when, I say, 
 the writer tells me to remember and work out all 
 these things, I turn the page, yawn, and recom- 
 mend Gladys and Jasper to fight it out among 
 themselves, and let me know the result when 
 they've done. 
 
 So I won't explain to you about the Tomini 
 Bocht and the routes by Tidore, and why one may, 
 on occasion, go west in order to go east. I will 
 only say that I went back to Macassar. Ques- 
 tioned as to my motives by the commercial 
 traveller, I told him I was going to look up the 
 trade in hair-oil which is a real trade, by the 
 way, though it did not, and does not, come within 
 the province of my house. 
 
 He met me in the offices of the Koninklijke, 
 Paketvaart Maatschappij, the day after my return, 
 and asked me if I was looking for hair-oil there. I 
 told him I was looking for balm of Gilead, and 
 walked off to the ticket office. The K.P.M., 
 like other steamship companies, does sell balm of 
 Gilead, on occasion. I hoped'it might sell some to 
 me.
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 63 
 
 " I say, though, I thought you were after gum 
 damar," he said, following me up. "I thought 
 of making a little tour myself where did you say 
 was the place for it ? " 
 
 I hadn't said, but I was quite ready to do 
 so. 
 
 " Oh, the Aru Islands, without a doubt," I told 
 him. 
 
 " Thanks," he said, and I left him buying a 
 ticket for the Arus, where you can get nothing 
 but pearl-shell and not much of that, now-a-days. 
 Somehow the incident did me good. I never saw 
 him again. 
 
 I went on my journey to the islands north and 
 east of Celebes, where gum damar is to be had, 
 and filled two notebooks and a half with facts 
 that I thought would be extremely useful later on. 
 Then I began to drift south. You can't help 
 drifting, once you are in the full tide of the K.P.M. 
 Its steamers are the net result of three hundred 
 years of trading in that particular corner of earth, 
 and they go to all the places you have heard of, 
 and all you have not especially the latter with 
 such frequency and speed, and they pelt you so 
 constantly with pictured guides, and tempt you 
 so cunningly with additions to tickets, and bar- 
 gains in the way of inclusive trips, that you drift 
 on and on like Maeldune, from island to island, 
 with no particular intention, at last, of ever 
 going home at all. . . . 
 
 I did not mean to go to Amboyna, but I found
 
 54 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 myself there, somehow or other. 1 looked up the 
 history of the place, and found it unexpectedly 
 exciting. The world has forgotten all about the 
 Amboyna massacre of British subjects and the 
 wars that ensued thereafter ; all about the extir- 
 pating of cloves in other islands, to grow them 
 exclusively in Amboyna at an advanced price ; 
 &11 about the enslavement of the natives, and the 
 fact that Amboyna once was ours, for a little while. 
 I looked these things up, and found them interest- 
 ing. And the Moluccas did I mention that 
 AmbojTia is a Molucca ? seemed, somehow or 
 other, much, much more attractive than the Mina- 
 hassa. And as the ship went on south-eastward 
 the attractiveness increased. We came to Banda 
 at the last, and Banda seemed to me a jolly and a 
 delightful place ; I made up my mind that I 
 would see something of Banda. 
 
 Now Banda Banda Xeira is not an island 
 where you can investigate the gum damar trade. 
 I am quite ready to allow that, but one never 
 knows what product of interest to a big importing 
 house may not turn up in a place like Banda Neira. 
 So I arranged for a stop-over, and left the steamer 
 at the port. 
 
 I will tell you what Banda is like, whether you 
 wish or not. There is not a place in the world 
 like Banda. I have Cristina's authority, which is 
 better than my own, for that. 
 
 You come in in the early morning. The ship 
 glides softly from the blue open sea into the crater
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 55 
 
 of a volcano, floored with water that is clear and 
 still, and jasper-green. This is the harbour, and 
 it is so deep that your great Dutch liner moors 
 herself right among the branches of the overhang- 
 ing trees. All round you, the volcano-rim, like 
 the edge of a giant cup, shuts away the sky ; you 
 feel imprisoned, till you look at the width of the 
 great water-floor, and see the many islets strewn 
 about its surface. So near that you could throw 
 a stone into its streets, you see a town ; an in- 
 credible, stone-built, mediaeval town, with a for- 
 tress and a castle. Overhanging the town, and 
 throwing a sinister shadow upon its narrow lanes, 
 mounts the cruel crater of the Goonong Api, a 
 volcano within a volcano. Day and night, a flag 
 of smoke or of fire flies from the red-scarred peak ; 
 the Goonong Api is not dead, and gives constant 
 warning of the fact. It has destroyed Banda more 
 than once during past centuries, and may do so 
 again to-morrow. 
 
 " That is why the town is sleepy," said Cristina. 
 1 met her on the canary tree walk, near the sea, 
 soon after I had landed. We greeted as if we had 
 expected one another ; perhaps we had I don't 
 know. 
 
 " Did you ever notice," she went on, " that the 
 people who live about active volcanoes are always 
 sleepy and lazy ? One would think a volcano was 
 the sort of thing that might keep you awake and 
 lively. But it doesn't. Vesuvius, Stromboli, 
 Popocatapetl, Teneriffe it's all the same."
 
 56 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " If that comparison holds," I said, " one might 
 expect a chain of active volcanoes all round this 
 town. I never saw anything like it. Have I lost 
 count of time, and is it Sunday or some holiday ? 
 and where are the inhabitants anyhow ? " 
 
 We Cristina, Mrs. Ash and I were walking 
 slowly along a green, silent avenue of canary 
 trees, in what should have been a suburb of the 
 tiny town. The wind from the sea rushed down 
 the tunnel made by the high arched boughs. There 
 was a grassy lawn between us and the water. On 
 the other side were houses ; quaint old bungalows 
 built of stone, with pillars and deep tiled roofs ; 
 here and there marble steps and piazzas ; here and 
 there plants growing in stone vases. The shutters 
 of all these houses were closed ; there was no one 
 moving about the dark verandahs. There was no 
 one on the grass beside the blue, still sea. 
 
 "Where are they ? " said Cristina, looking as 
 one who sees visions. " If you want to know, 
 you must ride the Pale Horse to find out. He'll 
 carry you where they are." 
 
 " Dead ? " I asked startled. 
 
 " Dead, and gone away ; last year, and last 
 century, and a hundred years ago. . . . Banda is 
 dying. There are people in some of those houses, 
 but most have lain empty for years. You could 
 have your choice of a mansion to live in, anywhere 
 about the place, for nothing." 
 
 It seemed incredible. The avenue with its wide 
 roadway, meant for busy traffic ; the level lawns
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 57 
 
 near the sea, where hundreds of promenading folk 
 might have sauntered up and down to take the 
 evening air ; the solid, splendid building of the 
 houses everything spoke of large population and 
 ample resources. Already I had wandered away 
 from the two or three streets near the steamer, 
 where languid Chinamen sustained a pretence of 
 shop-keeping, and brown women in white jacket 
 and sarong passed at long intervals, carrying 
 babies or fruit. I had found dry abandoned- 
 looking roads shut in by enormous walls, iron- 
 grilled doors that seemed to open upon nothing, 
 dusty, sagging porticoes and always, no one and 
 no one and no one. But I had had an idea that 
 the people were merely away I had not paused to 
 ask where. Now Cristina had told me. 
 
 "There are a hundred or two left," she said, 
 as we walked on down the empty avenue, 
 hushing our voices through some odd instinct that 
 I cannot explain. " But they hardly count, and 
 they seem to live mostly about the inner rooms, 
 sleeping. It's the strangest place I ever was in. 
 You can't believe that you are awake. Some- 
 times I think it is the influence of Banda itself, 
 and then again I suppose the scent of the nutmegs 
 may have something to do with it." 
 
 " I've noticed it, though I did not know what 
 it was," I said. "Nutmegs! Of course that 
 subtle sort of scent which floats through everything. 
 Yes, I can imagine." 
 
 I broke off ; I did not quite know why. The
 
 58 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 place seemed to hold up an invisible hand, motion- 
 ing " Silence." 
 
 It was late in the afternoon ; the sun was 
 slanting low under the huge canaries, and the sea 
 was turning gold. Someone has spoken of " the 
 infinite sadness of a summer afternoon." He was 
 right I am not philosopher enough to say why. 
 But I can add this, that sad as the English summer 
 afternoon may be, the waning day of the tropic 
 lands holds a subtler and deeper melancholy. There 
 is something in that eternal summer that touches 
 one, in such hours, like one's childish thoughts of 
 Valhalla or the Elysian Fields something soul- 
 less, wistful, through all its unchanging gold. . . . 
 
 " Where are we going ? " I asked, as we still 
 walked on. 
 
 " To the fort," said Cristina. " I want to show 
 you that." 
 
 Mrs. Ash marched beside us, a little robin of an 
 old lad} 7 , her elastic-sided boots scarcely marking 
 the dust, her thin black clothes looking, as they 
 alwaj's did, just as if nothing at all were inside 
 them, and as if they were propelled along by mere 
 force of will. She stared straight in front of her 
 all the time, deliberately abstracting her mind 
 from Banda. 
 
 We reached the fort, and there, under the 
 shadow of the mighty grey walls built by the Portu- 
 guese, and finished but fourteen years after the 
 death of England's Elizabeth, Cristina told me 
 what had brought her to the Spice Islands.
 
 59 
 
 "It was Richilda Van den Hofdyk," she ex- 
 plained. " I had a letter from her." 
 
 " Who in the name of goodness ? " 
 
 " She's a girl, just like myself, and a very nice 
 girl. She had heard something about me, so she 
 wrote to me in Macassar, and asked me to come 
 and see Banda. and, if I could, do something for 
 her. She sa3 r s she wants me to find the Golden 
 Nutmeg." 
 
 " May one ask what that is ? " 
 
 "Oh, one may ask. as much as one likes ; it's 
 what I'm asking myself all the time just now. 
 The thing is to find the answer. No, I'd rather 
 not go into the details just yet ; it's about the 
 most interesting thing I have come across but 
 Did you ever see anything like this fort ? " 
 
 I had, but not in this quarter of the world. 
 Great stone forts with moats and draw-bridges, 
 and gateways that run back like a railway tunnel, 
 are not unknown to the European traveller. But 
 here, on this fly-speck of an island, in the far end 
 of outer Malaysia, it was an astonishing thing to 
 see. Nor was it the only one. I had already 
 chanced on the ruins of three others, wandering 
 about the town looking for I may as well acknow- 
 ledge it looking for Cristina. 
 
 '' There used to be Portuguese soldiers here 
 in armour, with arquebuses," said Cristina, stand- 
 ing within the great empty space of grass en- 
 closed by the fort, and looking up to the untrodden 
 ramparts, where encroaching trees spread out their
 
 60 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 greedy hands of green. " There were girls in 
 hoops and ruffs, who cried for them when they 
 left Lisbon, two years' journey away. It was only 
 the Portuguese and then the Dutch, who knew 
 the way to get here ; they hid their charts, and 
 wouldn't tell other people. And they had forts 
 against the pirates ; the seas were full of pirates, 
 and even fifty years ago they weren't all quite 
 gone. And they made slaves of the natives, and 
 forced them to work in the spice plantations, and 
 took all their land away. There were no nutmegs 
 anywhere in the world like these. And by-and-by , 
 the Dutch came along and took the place." 
 
 " When ? " I asked ; I found this bit of history 
 interesting. 
 
 " I hate dates. It was about that Henrietta 
 Maria time, when men had beautiful lace collars. 
 So when the Dutch knew how good the nutmegs 
 were, they killed all the trees in other places, and 
 only kept them here, and made it death for any- 
 one to carry away a plant or a seed. And you 
 can't think what money they made. This was an 
 island of palaces. There are some of them still. 
 Lots of white marble, all the way from Italy 
 hundreds of years ago ! " 
 
 Mrs. Ash, with no expression whatever on her 
 face, stood in the midst of the fort beside us, not 
 listening to a word. She put me out somewhat, 
 but Cristina was used to her, and did not mind. 
 
 " They kept that up longer than you would 
 think," she said. " In the crinoline times, when
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 61 
 
 one wore slippers with points like a chisel, and 
 said, ' La ! ' they were still monopolising. But 
 by-and-by, people did smuggle out a few plants. 
 And then it was all up, because they began to 
 plant them in South America, and other places. 
 So the prices went down and down. And Banda 
 is dying as fast as it can. They hardly trouble to 
 pick the nutmegs now. And any people there are 
 are half-caste, except just a few. And the planters 
 who used to have ivory tables, and silver kitchen 
 kettles, are as poor as Job. So that's how Richilda 
 Van den Hofdyk came to write to me about the 
 Golden Nutmeg I'll tell you about it by-and-by. 
 I can't talk in the middle of that sunset." 
 
 On the dying glories of Banda fell the glory 
 of the dying day. We stood silent, watching. A 
 small wind got up and cried about the darkening 
 walls, like the spirit of the ancient place lamenting 
 days gone by. ... 
 
 " Would you," said Mrs. Ash, suddenly breaking 
 her long silence, and turning to me, " would you 
 buy your bacon at Smith's or the Stores ? " 
 
 Do you know you may hardly believe me, but 
 it is the truth the remark struck me as pathetic. 
 The old lady, in her dusty black, deaf and blind 
 to the wonders of the Farthest East, turning wist- 
 fully, in the midst of Banda's dying beauties, to 
 dreams of Kensington, motor-buses and grilled 
 bacon. . . . 
 
 "I would buy it' at the Stores/' I said, quite 
 seriously. " Not that I have anything to say
 
 62 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 against any other place. But you can't get better 
 than the best." 
 
 " I will buy it there," she said, looking animated 
 for the first time that afternoon. We walked 
 back to the queer, sleepy hotel, in silence. 
 
 I have said before that there is no privacj' in a 
 tropical house. I did not mean to hear Cristina 
 say that evening, when she was lying on her 
 verandah (I being invisible on mine; 
 
 " I like men to have clean-shaven faces, rather 
 hard, and to fit nicely into the shoulders of their 
 coats." 
 
 Mrs. Ash replied, with what seemed to me the 
 most extraordinary irrelevance 
 
 " I suppose, when a person is paid by the year, 
 they get a year's notice or salary." 
 
 I didn't wonder that Cristina said simply : 
 
 " Bosh ! " 
 
 When breakfast was over I remember it con- 
 sisted of cold cabinet pudding and cold cauliflower, 
 among other things ; all the flotsam and jetsam 
 of last night's dinner, as is the custom in provincial 
 Dutch hotels Cristina met me on the verandah. 
 Her dress rather surprised me ; I am no hand at 
 describing ladies' clothes, but I may safely say 
 that it was something from the Rue de la Paix, 
 and that the satisfaction she evidently derived 
 from it had nothing to do with such minor ques- 
 tions as comfort or ease. 
 
 " I put this on," she said, confidentially, " be-
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 63 
 
 cause I shall have such a lot of thinking to do to- 
 day." 
 
 Probably my face showed that I did not see 
 the connection as clearly as might have been 
 wished. 
 
 Cristina, making an impatient mouth at me, 
 spread out her gloved hands on her gown. 
 
 " It is beautiful, don't you see ? " she said. 
 
 " I like the lining, rather," was my comment. 
 
 " Nonsense." 
 
 "The stuffing, then." 
 
 " I'll whistle for Ash. What I mean is, that it 
 goes to my head, and makes me above myself, 
 and one wants to be made above oneself to think 
 one's best. I am quite half -drunk on this dress. 
 Men drink whiskey ; women drink clothes ..." 
 
 She looked round to see that there was no one 
 in sight, and then gave the neatest little spring-bok 
 jump into the air, clapping her tiny heels together 
 twice before she came down. 
 
 "That's the way it makes me feel," she said. 
 " Now we're all going to call on Richilda Van den 
 Hofdyk. She didn't ask us to stay with her, be- 
 cause she has a mother, and the mother doesn't 
 approve of Bernhardt and Ellen Terry. Is that 
 you, dear Ash ! come on, we're waiting." 
 
 I felt rather curious on the subject of Bernhardt 
 and Terry, thus unceremoniously shipped into a 
 galley that seemed singularly alien from them. 
 But there was no more talk on the subject of 
 Richilda. We walked for a long waj' through
 
 64 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 what I think must be the most beautiful woods 
 in the whole world the nutmeg forests of Banda, 
 never meeting a soul, except one dark-faced Malay 
 with the demeanour of a Buginese pirate, who was 
 engaged in peaceably picking nutmegs off boughs 
 with a split bamboo. Giant canaries shut out 
 most of the sun ; beneath their shade on the open 
 brown forest floor, stood up slight nutmeg trees 
 of twenty feet or so. There were ripe nutmegs, 
 like apricots, on all the trees ; drifts of the opened 
 fruits lay on the ground, showing bright lacework, 
 the colour of arterial blood, about the satin-black 
 stone. There were flowers, too, on the trees and 
 on the ground, so thick that we had to kick them 
 away as we walked carved-ivory flowers with a 
 heady scent of spice. In the forest, as we walked 
 along soft-footed upon dead leaves and drifted 
 blooms, it was very quiet, very green and cool, and 
 the sea breathed gently far away below. 
 
 " We aren't going to the Van den Hofdyk house," 
 explained Cristina. " That's near the town, away 
 below. Mevrouw Van den Hofdyk knows nothing 
 about Richilda's goings-on with me ; I'm going 
 to meet her at the house of the Golden Nutmeg. 
 Now don't ask me questions that nobody can 
 answer yet. I don't mind telling you that the 
 place has had that name for a generation or two, 
 and that no one seems to know why. I think 
 we're coming to it." 
 
 We were ; a narrow, overgrown path opened off 
 the main roadway at this point, and, following it,
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 66 
 
 we found ourselves in less than five minutes at the 
 mysterious house. 
 
 Have you ever dreamed, when a child, of 
 wandering through a wood, and coming suddenly 
 upon a splendid mansion that someone had 
 abandoned & mansion in which you proceeded 
 at once to settle yourself, taking possession of all 
 the furniture and all the treasures it contained ? 
 
 This was that dream. The house of the Golden 
 Nutmeg, built of stone and marble, green-stained 
 with rains, and cracked with earthquake shocks, 
 stood in the midst of a grove of tangled trees, that 
 broke all over it in waves of forest spray. Wild 
 banana leaves, as large as hearthrugs, thrust their 
 huge green hands under the tiles of the verandah, 
 and touched the dark shutters of the windows. 
 Lianas tied themselves about the stone urns by 
 the door. There were things growing on the roof 
 that had no business to be there, and things living 
 among them that had less. One such thing took 
 flight as we came up, sending an angry hiss at us 
 as it slipped like a coil of copper-brown rope over 
 the side of the house. 
 
 " Richilda hasn't come," said the Kris-Girl, 
 disappointedly. " We must wait for her a little. 
 I know how to get in." 
 
 She took a slate-shaped stone that was lying 
 on the terrace, levered up the sagging door with 
 it, and let us inside. We entered upon a maze of 
 rooms that surprised me by its extent ; there must 
 have been a dozen, opening in and out of each 
 6
 
 66 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 pther in a curious straggling fashion. They were 
 all big, all lofty, all beautifully tiled. The furniture 
 was colossal acres of dining-table upheld by legs 
 like carved barrels ; towers of sideboard rising tier 
 on tier to the sculptured Carrara ceiling ; cellarets 
 larger than any coffin I have ever seen ; four-post 
 beds that looked like the scaffolding for a house. 
 Everything was mahogany, rosewood, marqueterie, 
 and carved oak ; nothing plain or cheap. Most 
 of the things dated back two or three generations, 
 and some were even older. 
 
 " What do you think of it ? " asked Cristina, 
 coming to a pause in the middle of a room that 
 seemed to have been used as a sort of lounge. I 
 had opened what was left of the shutters, and the 
 afternoon sun was spilling golden pools on the 
 tiles of the floor, and trying vainly to call forth an 
 answering ray of light from the* dulled polish of 
 the great chests and chairs. 
 
 " I think," I said, " that it is fairly evident 
 ' Todgers could do it when it chose ' about this 
 part of the world." 
 
 " I've got a suite of maple," said Mrs. Ash, 
 restraining herself with a visible effort, " that I 
 wouldn't give for the whole lot of it ." Immediately 
 she detached herself from her surroundings, took 
 out a flag of knitting from some pre-Cambrian 
 pocket, sat down, and began to click and flash. 
 
 Do you know The Island of Dreams ? I can 
 whistle well it is my only accomplishment and 
 I began to whistle the song. There was something
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 67 
 
 about this Sleeping-Beauty sort of place, lost in 
 the woods of far-away, lovely, dying Banda, that 
 made me dream, hard-headed business man though 
 I am . Perhaps I looked at Cristina . I think I did . 
 
 Cristina did a curious thing. I knew the mean- 
 ing of it, years after. . . . She lifted the hand that 
 wore the great Chinese ring, and beat it on a marble 
 table, so that the ring struck into the flesh, and 
 bruised her finger. There was a tall oak press 
 breast-high between us, but I saw in the dulled 
 panes of the window what she did. 
 
 " Come on and look over the rest of the house," 
 she said, in a rather hard voice. " I don't believe 
 that Dutch girl is coming." 
 
 We had been sitting very quietly in the big stone 
 and marble hall, making no noise that could be 
 heard through the thick walls of the house, and 
 hearing nothing but our own low voices and the 
 chuckling of a few green parrots in the forest out- 
 side. Now suddenly, from what we had thought 
 was an empty room at the far side of the verandah, 
 came a sound that stopped us dead. It was a 
 voice but what a voice ! 
 
 No ; it was not anyone singing. Richilda Van 
 den Hofdyk (Richilda Thornivale now ; she 
 married Viscount Thornivale a year after she first 
 came out, as everyone knows) never sang ; she 
 was like Trilby, tone-deaf, in spite of her magnifi- 
 cent speaking voice, and unlike Trilby, she never 
 found a Svengali to wake unsuspected music in 
 her. She was, on that first occasion when I heard
 
 68 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 her how many times have I, and you, others, 
 heard her since ! rehearsing Lady Macbeth ; and 
 she did it in a way to stir the hair on your head, 
 and send small shivers down your spine. Speak- 
 ing, Richilda could not express herself at that 
 time in commonly decent English, but reciting 
 she was perfect. Most people know of similar cases. 
 She had come to the famous passage about 
 " This little hand," and we heard her glorious 
 voice who does not know Richilda's voice of 
 gold ? trembling down from sudden passion into 
 despair 
 
 " All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little 
 hand ! " 
 
 " Good Lord ! " was all I found to say. 
 
 "Just so," remarked Cristina. "Now you 
 know why old Mevrouw Van den Hofdyk talks 
 about stage divorces and so on, and has pink fits 
 whenever she finds a European steamer time-table 
 in the house. If Richilda had twopence to spare, 
 or could get it, she would be off to London to- 
 morrow. She has acted in private theatricals 
 about the islands, and everyone went mad over 
 her. I saw her myself in a Dutch play. She was 
 simply wonderful the finest thing since Bern- 
 hardt, if she was trained. * And she is not too old 
 yet, very little over twenty. You can't think 
 how she wants to go to Europe. . . . Listen that's 
 Dutch now she is rehearsing the part of a girl 
 who is entreating her lover not to leave her. I 
 suppose she doesn't know we are here. This
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 69 
 
 place is her private stage ; her mother would never 
 allow it at home." 
 
 " She ought to," I said with conviction. " No 
 Mevrouw has the right to bury that in the forests 
 of Malaysia. Besides, think of what she might 
 earn ! " 
 
 " Mevrouw Van den Hofdyk doesn't care about 
 that. She is a determined Calvinist, and thinks 
 the stage is perdition. Richilda's her only child, 
 too. She could afford to let her go, with 
 economy, but she won't, and the girl has nothing of 
 her own. You see, up till about thirty years ago, 
 the Van den Hofdyks were so rich that everyone 
 called the place the House of the Golden Nutmeg 
 because nobody could make out how a small 
 plantation paid so well. They always seemed to 
 have cash to spend upon everything, though 
 nutmegs were going down and down, and it grew 
 into a kind of legend that they had one nutmeg 
 tree that bore golden fruit. I can't say how much 
 of the idea was figurative, and how much plain 
 superstition ; these out-of-the-way corners can 
 show you curious survivals. . . . Well, Richilda 
 swears there is something in the idea. Her uncle, 
 who lived here with his sons, was the last about 
 whom they told the yarn ; he and the sons all 
 died together in the cholera year, some time in 
 the eighteen-seventies. So, if there was any 
 handing down of a secret, as she thinks there was, 
 it died with them. Since then, the other Van 
 den Hofdyks, who have mostly died out, took
 
 70 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 away all the light furniture, and left the place as 
 it is. No one cares to live in it ; people haven't 
 the money to keep up these big houses now." 
 
 " And this Miss Miss Richilda actually believes 
 that there's a golden nutmeg tree growing about 
 the place ? " 
 
 " She doesn't know what she believes. She's 
 thought and thought, and brooded and brooded 
 till she hardly seems sane about the idea. Still, 
 I think there is decidedly something in what she 
 has told me. Come in ; she must have arrived 
 by the back door while we were talking." 
 
 We found Miss Van den Hofdyk in the further 
 room, standing with one hand on a colossal 
 mahogany table. I need not describe her at 
 this time of day everyone who is likely to read 
 this knows Madame Richilda's round Dutch face 
 and massive flaxen hair ; can tell you how she 
 stands on the stage, with just that trick of resting 
 her hand lightly on some support (and what an 
 exquisite hand and arm it is !) can picture to 
 you her velvets and her furs, worn in the Rubens- 
 esque manner that we have come to regard as 
 peculiar to herself. We know Richilda; or else 
 we are ourselves unknown. 
 
 Well, then, it was Richilda who stood there 
 but as we knew her at the time, just a badly- 
 dressed, fairly pretty Colonial Dutch girl. 
 
 " You dear one ! " she said in English, as 
 Cristina appeared. She kissed the little lady 
 affectionately. Cristina endured the embrace with
 
 71 
 
 politeness, and introduced me as an English friend 
 who was fond of the theatre. 
 
 "It is not of the theatre that I shall wish to 
 talk," said the girl. "It is about the Golden 
 Nutmeg. Cristina, I have thought greatly, but 
 still I do not find the secret. And my mother 
 always recites for me the devil influences of the 
 stage, and says she has not the single guilder. I 
 bought me detective novels from the steward of 
 the steamer, but still I cannot detect." 
 
 " Oh, Richilda ! what have you been doing ? " 
 asked the Kris-Girl, strangling a laugh in its birth. 
 
 Richilda drew a notebook out of her ample pocket. 
 
 " Sit down. It is still the house of a Van den 
 Hofdyk," she said grandly ; and we sat. Mrs. 
 Ash, all the time, had been knitting like the Ven- 
 geance herself, only pausing to give Richilda an 
 uninterested bow. She went on knitting, while 
 we talked. 
 
 " The deductive method following," began 
 Richilda, " I first deduct that my uncle was a 
 clever man ; therefore he will not hide any secret 
 where the first one may find. On the roof I climb, 
 since that is the last place of which one should 
 think. With a magnifying glass I examine every 
 tile ; some I pull off. There is nothing. In the 
 cellar then I looked, because my uncle would much 
 drink, for what my mother says ; so I deduct 
 that he the secret would hide where he very much 
 would go to. All the bottles that are left I have 
 opened, and everyone I taste "
 
 72 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " My dear Richilda ! " 
 
 " But I drank not much, only to see what there 
 might be a taste of strange thing therein. For I 
 have read a story " 
 
 "So I have. Richilda, didn't it make you 
 awfully screwed ? " 
 
 " Perhaps no matter. I lie down till I am 
 good again, and then some more I have deducted. 
 With my magnifying glass I look at all the dust 
 in the corners " 
 
 The click of Mrs. Ash's needles paused. 
 
 " Couldn't you see it without that ? " she asked, 
 in an accent of the bitterest scorn. 
 
 Richilda flowed evenly on, calm and passion- 
 less as one of her country's canals. 
 
 ' ' I have from that no result. I then on my 
 uncle's bed lay down, and his way of thinking 
 tried to reconstruct. At the ceiling I looked, where 
 his eyes should most often rest. From this I 
 deduct nothing, nor nothing from the walls. I 
 walk like him the verandah round and round, 
 and where his eyes should naturally fall, I say 
 ' Here the idea may have come to him,' and in 
 that place I search and search. The gutters for 
 this reason I have scraped all round. Down the 
 well I have gone with a ladder, and in the wlel 
 there is nothing to deduct. In the common places 
 I have not looked at all, for my uncle was a 
 graduate of Arts, a man of great mind, and it 
 should never happen that he could have concealed 
 anything in a mattress, or a hearthstone, or up a
 
 73 
 
 chimney. It may be that my mind is not great, 
 or not enough great, for I cannot solve this problem. 
 With all the deduction I have made, there is no 
 result." 
 
 " Well ? " said Cristina. She was sitting on 
 the corner of the massive table, dangling one 
 narrow-toed foot, and playing with the ribbons of 
 her dress. There was something about her, all 
 the same, that suggested she was not inattentive. 
 There was a certain tenseness. ... I find it hard to 
 describe. Most people are somewhat limp, men- 
 tally and physically. Cristina never was. In 
 moments of excitement, one could almost see her 
 nerves tighten up like violin strings. 
 
 All the same, she spoke carelessly : 
 
 " Well, Richilda, I'm sure you have done your 
 best, and none of us can do more. Now you'll 
 recite for us, to reward us for coming up all that 
 long hill, won't you ? " 
 
 But of the recitation I need say nothing. Who 
 does not know Richilda ? 
 
 It was very hot when we went down the hill, 
 through solitary dark woods to the town that lay 
 asleep all day and all night beside the glassy 
 Malaysian sea. Cristina, in her airy, dainty 
 dress, flitted from gloom to gloom among the 
 enormous trees like some butterfly that had 
 acquired the form of a human being, while keeping 
 all the butterfly nature. She seemed to have dis- 
 missed the problem of the day altogether from her 
 mind ; nothing less serious, less intellectual than
 
 74 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 she, decking herself with the ivory flowers of the 
 nutmegs, and making " fairy wands " of peeled 
 saplings with a star-shaped bloom set on top. 
 Miss Van den Hofdyk trod slowly and seriously, 
 laden with thought. Mrs. Ash walked with mo 
 (she seemed to have taken an odd fancy to me of 
 late, varied by little flashes of resentment that I 
 could not quite understand) and broke silence as 
 much as two or three times on the journey back 
 to town. I do not know that I listened to her 
 as closely as politeness demanded, but I gathered 
 that she was telling me how to force hyacinths in 
 a frosty winter. It was extremely hot ; my 
 collar was a rag before we got in, and my coat 
 clung to my shoulders, limp and soaked. When 
 we arrived at the hotel, Mrs. Ash, putting her 
 drenched handkerchief into her pocket as of no 
 further use, stopped a moment at the door to 
 explain that snow was good for certain hardy 
 perennials, but you mustn't mistake your kinds. 
 Then she went in. 
 
 After dinner, when the stars had begun to glow 
 like little moons upon the water-floor of the old 
 volcano, and the Goonong Api was sending up a 
 pillar of vermilion light, I wandered out into the 
 town. There is some little business in the place, 
 and your Colonial Dutchman does not hold the 
 after-dinner hour sacred to friendship. I wanted 
 to see and talk to a certain trader whom I had 
 been hearing about. He owned a good many 
 small islands farther north, and concerning this
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 75 
 
 matter of the corner in gum damar. k . . But I 
 forget again. You must not be told about the 
 new tax, and what it was going to do. . . . 
 
 Well, I went out, with an excellent Sumatra 
 cigar for company, and walked down the sea-road. 
 And by-and-by I met a Malay woman, tripping 
 along in those inevitably Malay heelless slippers 
 flip-flop, flip-flop. It was dusk, but I could see 
 that she had a good figure, and held herself very 
 well, with a certain pride of carriage not common 
 among women of savage races. She had on the 
 usual folded table-cloth of a skirt that they call 
 a sarong, and the usual white combing- jacket 
 about the ugliest native dress there is. Her hair 
 was hidden under an Indian sari, pulled half 
 over her shoulders ; by this, I 'judged her to be 
 of mixed race. She slip-slopped past me in the 
 semi-dark, and I never should have thought of 
 noticing her, only that . . . 
 
 I don't know the name of the perfume ; Cristina 
 doesn't use it nowadays. She did then, however ; 
 it was very dainty and delicate, not so much a 
 perfume as a suggestion that somebody, somewhere, 
 had been picking small golden roses, the hardly- 
 sweet-at-all kind. ... I stepped aside and blocked 
 the figure's way. 
 
 " Miss Raye," I asked, " what mad freak is this ? " 
 
 She answered in Malay. 
 
 " You needn't trouble, I know you," I said. 
 " Where are you going, and where in the name of 
 chaperonship is your Mrs. Ash ? "
 
 76 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 At this ehe gave in, with a merry chuckle that 
 no Malay could possibly have given forth. 
 
 " I'm going to the native kampong," she said. 
 " Mrs. Ash, bless her dear heart, is off to the 
 Lutheran Church (I suppose you forgot it was 
 Sunday) and thinks I'm asleep on the verandah." 
 
 I threw away the cigar. 
 
 "I'm going with you," I said. "You must 
 remember I'm not quite a new-chum here now, 
 and I don't consider " 
 
 " Oh, but you can't come," she said. " I must 
 pass for a Malay, or I shall hear nothing. . . . 
 And there's no danger, really. And if there 
 was " 
 
 She drew aside the folds of her sarong. In the 
 starlight, I could just make out the crooked handle 
 of a kris. 
 
 " Well, Kris-Girl," I said. " You may say what 
 you like, but I shall stay outside any house you go 
 into." 
 
 Cristina looked at me, and saw (I think) that 
 there was no moving me from my purpose. She 
 accepted the situation. 
 
 " Walk a good way behind," she said ; and we 
 went on. 
 
 It was some way to the cluster of Malay houses 
 whither we were bound. Cristina walked on before 
 me in the starlight, swiftly, but with the dragging 
 shuffle inseparable from the heelless bath slipper 
 that is worn by the coloured folk of Malaysia. I 
 Admired her dexterity in managing the wretched
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 77 
 
 things ; for myself, it was as much as I could do 
 to get to the hotel bathroom from .my own room, 
 without losing a slipper on the way, or (more 
 likely still) kicking it into the face of the first 
 person who happened to be passing. The Chinese 
 slipper of Malaysia is one of the most dangerous 
 and unmanageable of projectiles. I have seen an 
 innocent British female tourist, of discreet age and 
 conduct, kick her bath slipper down an alleyway 
 as smartly as if she had been a Rugby forward, 
 landing it unerringly upon the bald head of an 
 Excellency who was going in to breakfast. I have 
 seen a shy clergyman, on the Sydney-Singapore 
 boat, hit a golden-haired variety actress in the 
 back, and instantly flee to the shelter of his cabin, 
 leaving the astonished actress, who had not seen 
 her assailant, alone with a mystery and a slipper 
 the size of a small bucket. You are bound to 
 come to that slipper sooner or later, travelling 
 in Malaysia it is so universal and so cheap and 
 cool but you will never, never, unless you are 
 as agile as a professional acrobat, learn to walk in 
 it without slip-slopping it off. 
 
 Well ! I tramped behind Cristina, a little 
 doggedly, disapproving of her errand, whatever 
 it might be, yet determined to see her through it. 
 What I thought about during that night walk 
 under the huge canary trees, with the warm wind 
 blowing off the Banda Sea, and flaring my cigarette 
 all to one side, doesn't matter. 
 
 Perhaps I was musing on the unsuitability of
 
 78 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 too much freedom for solitary young gentlewomen 
 of four-and-twenty or thereabouts, and considering 
 the advantages, for such young gentlewomen, of 
 having a sensible business head in the immediate 
 neighbourhood, as a permanent thing. 
 
 Perhaps I was wondering if the man who had 
 died a horrible death two years before, had been 
 careful of dainty Cristina, and stood between her 
 and the rough things of the world ; if she missed 
 that care, and had grown a little reckless in conse- 
 quence. . . . We went on in silence. 
 
 When we came to the clump of native houses, 
 showing faint light through their semi-transparent 
 walls, Cristina held up her hand, without looking 
 round, as a warning to me, and disappeared in the 
 shadows. I followed her, and saw where she went 
 in. She ran up the crazy ladder leading to the 
 doorway as lightly as a bird, for all her shuffling 
 native footgear. I heard her say something in 
 Malay, and then I drew back, and peeped through 
 the outer wall. I knew she did not want me, but 
 none the less I was resolved to stay about. 
 
 In the brown Malay house, set on low piles, and 
 built of bamboo, there was only one rude kerosene 
 lamp, placed on the floor. Still, a man standing 
 outside in the dark could see all he wanted through 
 the chinks. 
 
 Cristina was sitting among a number of Malays, 
 men and women, helping herself to hot rice with 
 her hands (it struck me that the quality of her
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 79 
 
 brown paint must be good). She picked bits of 
 fish from a pile on a banana leaf, and added them 
 to the mass, cramming the whole into her mouth 
 with three fingers. It seemed to be a house where 
 there was plenty for all comers ; quite a score were 
 scattered on the floor, munching crabs' legs, curry, 
 and pieces of the inner parts of fowls. I judged 
 them to be the coolies ; engaged by day in unload- 
 ing steamers or carrying goods. The women were 
 apparently their wives. 
 
 Cristina was not talking much, but she seemed 
 to be leading a certain ancien^dame, in a silk 
 jacket and sarong, to converse as much as possible. 
 That was a good deal. The old lady, warmed 
 with food and with something out of a coarse 
 German tumbler, seemed to be relating a long 
 story, with much gesticulation. Cristina, keeping 
 in the dusk, and throwing in an occasional remark 
 in Malay, listened. I am bound to say that the 
 porters and their wives paid her very little atten- 
 tion. Her disguise was good, and she was not 
 beautiful according to the native standard, else 
 it, and she, might have been scrutinised too closely 
 for safety. 
 
 The old woman chattered on, moving her head 
 about excitedly, and eating as fast as she talked. 
 I was picking up Malay by this time the pigeon- 
 Malay which passes current all over the Farthest 
 East, is one of the easiest languages in the world 
 and I could guess at something of what was 
 being said, but it did not seem to be particularly
 
 80 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 exciting. A certain " Tuan Hendrik " came into 
 the talk ; they seemed so far as I could guess 
 to be discussing his love-affairs. I wondered who 
 he might be. Cristina seemed interested in his 
 history ; she was clearly egging on the old lady, 
 by means of certain glasses of comforting " sago- 
 weer," to talk as much as possible. I thought 
 but I could not be sure that the story seemed a 
 trifle scandalous. If so, the Kris-Girl took it 
 coolly ; she merely nodded, and held up her small, 
 stained brown hands, with an expressive cluck or 
 two, purely native in tone. 
 
 " They may talk about this Miss Richilda as an 
 actress," I said to myself, " but Cristina Raye could 
 beat her hollow at that, if she cared." 
 
 And then I felt indignant at the idea. I sup- 
 pose the man does not live, the common, mascu- 
 line man, who is gratified by the thought, especi- 
 ally the sudden thought, of seeing his dear ones 
 on the stage. Even in the case of dear ones who 
 are not his, and never may be, the truth still 
 holds. Anything of the mountebank business, 
 from leading lady at a great theatre down to a 
 speech in the. village hall, is repugnant to man 
 where his women are concerned. I do not ven- 
 ture to say whether this is right and natural, 
 or merely an outbreak of the Grand Turk that 
 exists, suppressed, in most of us. But I do know 
 that I hated to see Cristina masquerading as a 
 native, and that I was rapidly growing to hate 
 this whole detective business of hers, from end to
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 81 
 
 end. Perhaps I understood why she clung to it 
 what troubles it beat away from her mind 
 and perhaps I liked the cause even less than the 
 effect produced. 
 
 Banda had seemed to me a much nicer place 
 than the Minahassa, but, somehow or other, that 
 night I began to think that it might be rather a 
 detestable spot too. . . . 
 
 In half an hour or so, Cristina rose to her feet, 
 placed a half-eaten piece of fish politely back in 
 the common stock, and nodded good-bye, explain- 
 ing (as she afterwards told me) that she heard her 
 mistress's voice somewhere outside, and wanted to 
 get off and hide before " Mevrouw " caught her 
 away from her work. 
 
 She joined me some distance away from the 
 bamboo house, and walked with me by unfre- 
 quented paths back to the hotel. 
 
 " Come to afternoon coffee to-morrow, and you 
 shall see what you shall see," she whispered, as she 
 left me. 
 
 You cannot, generally speaking, have a private 
 sitting-room in a Malaysian hotel, because no one 
 stays indoors except when in bed. But the great 
 stone verandahs take the place of sitting-rooms 
 well enough, especially when the hotel is all but 
 empty. Most of these strangely palatial hotels 
 are empty, or nearly so, the greater part of the 
 time. I used to wonder if the proprietors kept 
 them open simply because they had fallen into the 
 habit of doing it, and couldn't stop. . . . 
 6
 
 82 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 In an undisturbed corner of the verandah, 
 then, we met about four o'clock Cristina, Mrs. 
 Ash and I. The native servants, to a loud accom- 
 paniment of Jonges ! (" Boy ! ") were bringing 
 round coffee to the various rooms. Fat Dutch- 
 men loomed in distant perspective, pink-pyjama'd, 
 bare feet up on " planter " chairs. But no one 
 was within ear-shot. 
 
 By the time the boys had got round to our 
 corner with coffee, Miss Van den Hofdyk had 
 appeared, walking slowly down the white-hot road. 
 Behind her came slip-slopping a little old Malay 
 woman, withered up like a walnut. 
 
 They joined us on the verandah, and then 
 Cristina, without pause for anything more in the 
 way of greeting than a quickly offered cup of 
 coffee, dashed into her subject. There was nothing 
 frivolous or elusive about the Kris-Girl this after- 
 noon. Sharp, hard and keen as her namesake 
 blade, she cut across Richilda Van den Hofdyk's 
 leisurely politeness with : 
 
 " Does she understand English ? " 
 
 " Neither English nor Dutch," said Richilda, 
 looking at the small old woman, who was standing 
 in an attitude of subjection close beside her. 
 
 " And yet they say in the kampong she was 
 married to your uncle ! " 
 
 Richilda at this fairly " sat up." 
 
 "They say the untrue," she declared, her voice 
 shaking with annoyance. " Not a truth in it. 
 My Uncle Hendrik had her for cook in many years.
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 83 
 
 She was the very good cook. She was pretty iu 
 those days. A man is not an angel. And this 
 old woman, if there was some Malay ceremony, 
 it was for her quite good enough. But married, 
 we don't call it." 
 
 " Still, she was married according to some 
 Malay idea, and he was fond of her." 
 
 " Oh, fond ! that I shall g^ve you," rejoined 
 Miss Van den Hofdyk calmly. " How shall it 
 matter ? She has forgot him many years ago, and 
 she makes a little cook for my mother and me, 
 and we give her eat and sleep." 
 
 " Now, Richilda," said the Kris-Girl, " I want 
 to tell you, if you understand me, that you've been 
 barking up the wrong tree, as Americans say, all 
 this time. I do think there is something in the 
 idea of your uncle's secret, but the way you've 
 been trying to find it out is just detective story 
 stuff. And you must remember we aren't in a 
 detective story, you and I ; we're here in Banda, 
 in the real world. And things in the real world 
 aren't planned out like funny puzzles that work 
 when you get the right key-piece. They're much 
 more ragged. And full of loose ends. You must 
 simplify. If I were asked for a motto, to be used 
 in this sort of work, I should say, ' Select the rele- 
 vant.' That covers nearly everything. And 
 when you've selected the relevant, cut away every- 
 thing else." 
 
 She made a downward sweeping motion with 
 her small hand.
 
 84 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Cut away," she repeated. " Now, let me ask 
 this old creature some questions." 
 
 She turned to the old woman, and spoke in 
 Malay. I will translate, as it was translated to 
 me after : 
 
 " Do you remember Tuan Hendrik ? " 
 
 " I remember," came dully from the dried-up 
 old face. 
 
 " Was it true that Tuan Hendrik was a black 
 sorcerer 1 " 
 
 The old face became suddenly moved. 
 
 " No, no never ! The Tuan was a good man, 
 and he was very good to me." 
 
 " Then what " Cristina fixed the woman with 
 her sharp blue eyes, and held up a little pointed 
 finger "what used he to do, when he shut him- 
 self up in that room, and forbid you to come in ? " 
 
 " Why, how do you " began Richilda ; but 
 
 Cristina silenced her. 
 
 "Hush! Idon't. lamtryingtogetit. Bequiet!" 
 
 The old woman had been endeavouring to speak, 
 and now the words came out in a rush : 
 
 " I do not know, and it does not matter. Why 
 should the Tuan not do so if he liked ? " It was 
 strange to see how her aged face was reviving, 
 under the influence of a feeling that must have 
 lain dead or forgotten for thirty years. Already 
 one could understand that this dusty wrinkled hag 
 might have been lovely once might have been 
 loved herself, and loved the strength and fairness 
 of the big blond Dutchman.
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 85 
 
 " But in that room ! " Cristina watched the 
 dark, lined face. 
 
 " Why should a Tuan not come and cook, or 
 drink, or sleep, in his own kitchen, if he wished ! 
 I tell you, there was no sorcery. He was a good 
 man, and he was good to me. . . ." 
 
 She put both hands over her eyes, withdrew 
 them, and looked at them, as if wondering to find 
 no tears - on their wrinkled surface. 
 
 " It is all so long ago," she said, and, none 
 keeping her, got up, and slip-slopped away off the 
 verandah. 
 
 " Let her go," said Cristina. " That is enough/' 
 
 " Now," she went on, turning to Richilda, 
 " you can go up to the House of the Golden Nut- 
 meg, look under the hearth-stone of the kitchen, 
 and tell me what you find there." 
 
 Mrs. Ash put down the Home Gardener, which 
 she seemed to have been reading all through the 
 visit, clapped her hands emphatically, and said : 
 
 " Bravo ! " She then immersed herself once 
 more in the Directions for Budding Alpine Rosea. 
 
 " I do not comprehend," said Miss Van den 
 Hofdyk. " In what way have you deduct ? " 
 
 "I'll tell you nothing now!" said Cristina. 
 " When you've been to the house " 
 
 Richilda was buttoning her gloves. 
 
 "I have time to go now," she said. "It will 
 not be dark for two hours." 
 
 " Take Mr. Garden and a crow-bar with you," 
 said Cristina. " I'm going to my room to sleep,
 
 86 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 and not a soul is to dare to come near me till 
 dinner-time." 
 
 " Dinner is half-past eight. I'll see to it," 
 observed Mrs. Ash, disappearing after her charge. 
 
 Richilda was already away down the road, 
 tramping hard, through heat that I cannot hope 
 to describe. With something of a sigh, I went to 
 look for the crowbar, and followed her. I did 
 not catch her up till she was nearly at the House 
 of the Golden Nutmeg. By this time, it was 
 getting cooler, and the shadow of the woods was 
 grateful. 
 
 " What do you expect to find ? " I said, rang- 
 ing alongside as she stooped to lever up the door. 
 " Let me, please ? " 
 
 " Thank you. I do not know. Perhaps the 
 secret of a bank deposit that we know not of. 
 
 Perhaps hundred-guilder notes. Perhaps Oh, 
 
 I'm impatient to know. Come, come ! " 
 
 The kitchen (we had seen it on the day before, 
 among other rooms) was a massive stone building, 
 standing a little apart from the rest of the house. 
 It was empty, save for an old oak dresser that 
 would have brought its weight in silver, anywhere 
 on the Continent of Europe. The late sun 
 slanted through the broken shutters, and made 
 spots of irregular light on the floor, which, like 
 all the other floors in the house, was made of small 
 neat tiles, prettily and elaborately set. 
 
 I saw at once why Cristina had come to that 
 conclusion about the hearth-stone. It was the
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 87 
 
 only thing that could have been lifted without 
 leaving traces. 
 
 And it had been lifted often. Although thirty 
 years had passed since the last raising of the 
 stone, it came away easily enough ; the cement 
 was a mere blind, set in a bevel about the edges. 
 
 Underneath was a hole in the ground, and nine 
 small leather bags, full, also, I do not know how 
 many, empty. 
 
 "Money!" screamed Richilda, upon her top 
 note. " Money, Europe, Paris, Shakespeare, 
 Ibsen, Shaw ah, ah ! give me your knife quick ! " 
 
 She was down on her knees on the dirty floor, 
 tearing at the bags. 
 
 " Money ! ah, ah ! " she screamed. 
 
 I thought her rather premature ; I also thought 
 her prettier than I previously judged. She had 
 such a colour in her cheeks such a scarlet in her 
 greedy lip 
 
 Well, if premature, she was right. When the 
 bags were slashed, out came gold; good sterling 
 sovereigns, English every one. They were all 
 dated in the first half of the nineteenth century ; 
 none later than 1850. They ran out like water ; 
 they fell in heaps. They rang with the sound 
 that only gold in heaps can give. Did I tell you 
 that I had once been employed in a bank ? I can 
 judge the look of a lot of coin better than most. 
 This heap I guessed at about nineteen hundred, 
 and I was very nearly right, as we proved after- 
 wards.
 
 88 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 When I turned my attention from the gold to 
 the girl, I was astonished to find Richilda, who had 
 been looking at the dates, squatted back on her 
 heels, regarding the heap of coin with horror. 
 
 " Uncle Hendrik, Uncle Hendrik ! " she was 
 saying, and then something in Dutch. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " I asked. 
 
 " The matter it is that I am the niece of a 
 pirate ! " said Richilda, in low tones of dismay. 
 " And I do not like it. It is a a disgusting 
 ancestry." 
 
 " Pirate ! " I said. 
 
 ' ' ' Yes. In the early time of your Queen Victoria, 
 there was an English ship came by the Spice 
 Islands here. And she stopped at Banda, for 
 water. And it was said she had very much gold 
 on board, for the buying of merchandise. In the 
 harbour under the Goonong Api, she sank, and 
 it was very deep, and no one knew why she shall 
 have thus sunk in the night. But some persons 
 were saying that the natives it had done, and that 
 was what we were believing. But all those 
 English, they was drowned. And my Uncle 
 Hendrik, he went away the same night with his 
 own ship, and not for a long time came back ; 
 my mother she tells that. And six of his serfs 
 of the plantation, they was dead. . . . Heer Garden, 
 it is a clear thing for me. He did that crime, and 
 the money he never dared to show, so all the time 
 when he was so rich, they would say it was the 
 golden nutmeg that on his plantation grew, and
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 89 
 
 none of them knew the true. I am a pirate's 
 niece." 
 
 " Oh, well, it's none of your funeral, Miss Van 
 den Hofdyk," I said. " You've got what will take 
 you to Europe ; don't you worry about what 
 your Uncle Hendrik did. As for Miss Raye, I 
 think she's wonderful to have found it all out." 
 
 "She is my only friend," said Richilda, incon- 
 sistently. By this time she was looking some- 
 what more lovingly at the gold. She gathered it 
 up in the front of her dress, rose with my help, and 
 stood holding the coin, a heavy load, to her 
 breast. 
 
 " It shall be consecrated to art, for to em- 
 purify it," she said, solemnly. " It shall purchase 
 my freedom, and that, too, shall whiten it. I 
 want to be free. I have told my mother this, 
 again and again ; she has again and again 
 refused me. On one day, I spoke to her the words 
 of Hilda Wangel " 
 
 " Ibsen's ? " 
 
 " Yes. I spoke them like flame ! And she 
 was a stone. My freedom she would not give, 
 .even for that." 
 
 " I really don't see how you could have expected 
 her to," I said. Indeed, it seemed to me a crazy 
 thing, to suppose that anyone would be won over 
 from a firmly conceived determination, by a few 
 minutes' reciting. 
 
 " Nee ? " said Richilda, using the strong Dutch 
 negative. " Don't you ? " Then she did a
 
 90 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 strange thing. She laid down the gold, took a 
 step forward into the middle of the room, and 
 gave forth Hilda Wangel's speech to her husband. 
 
 " Wangel, let me tell you this ! you can indeed keep me 
 here ! You have the means and the power to do it. 
 And you intend to do it. But my mind all my thoughts, 
 all the longings and desires of my soul these you cannot 
 bind ! These will rush and press out into the unknown 
 that I was created for, and that you have kept from me." 
 
 Well ! Most of you who read this have heard 
 Richilda in the celebrated revival of The Sea-Lady, 
 and you will know how she spoke. Those who 
 have not heard her can perhaps guess, by her 
 effect on Europe, what effect she had on me 
 there, in the strange dead room of that dead house, 
 on an island at the earth's far ends Richilda 
 the tragedienne of the twentieth century, pleading 
 for her freedom. . . . 
 
 No, after that, with all my prejudice against 
 the stage, I would never have lifted a finger to keep 
 her in Malaysia, had any power lain with me. I 
 only wondered that her mother had not, after all, 
 been influenced by the speech, given as it was. 
 I wonder more now. Richilda has talked many 
 a man's and woman's soul half out of its body, 
 since those days. 
 
 A silence followed. Richilda stood with her 
 arms hanging down by her sides, and her eyes 
 looking out through the window. There was not 
 much to be seen from that window a space of 
 stone verandah, a springing insurgence of leaves
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 91 
 
 and lianas and spraying orchid blossoms, all run 
 wild together in the deserted garden where Tuan 
 Hendrik had been used, no doubt, to stroll and 
 tend his flowers, in the days when Victoria was 
 young. You could scarce even see the sky, save 
 for a thread of blue above the smothering forest 
 that walled the garden in, and threatened, soon, 
 to blot it out altogether, as the resistless forests 
 of Malaysia do blot out the work of man, if he 
 leaves it unguarded for a few brief years. 
 
 Yet Richilda looked as if she saw much, and 
 far : and I, the bystander, knew that her spirit 
 was " pressing out into the unknown that it was 
 created for." And in her arms, forgotten, yet 
 held close, was the gold of dead Tuan Hendrik, 
 the " Golden Nutmeg " that had so long been 
 sought in vain. 
 
 Dark comes swiftly, in Banda Neira of the Spice 
 Islands. I had to wake up the " Sea Lady," 
 and remind her that it was a long way down to 
 the town, and that Mevrouw Van den Hofdyk 
 would probably send out the boys to hunt for her, 
 if she did not make haste back. So we hurried 
 down the narrow, darkening track a good deal 
 more quickly than we had ascended, I carrying 
 the gold, and Richilda " pressing out into the 
 unknown," at such a rate that I had all I could 
 do, laden as I was, to keep up with her. 
 
 Richilda wanted to take the gold home with 
 her, but I vetoed that promptly. I did not wish 
 to hear of a native murder next morning. Then
 
 92 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 she asked me to take charge of it, an honour that 
 I thought best to decline. Instead, we used 
 the last gleam of daylight to hunt up the local 
 banker, and get him to put the coin in safety. I 
 don't know what he thought ; I fancy he shut 
 up the human side of his mind as tight as possible, 
 and opened the banker side as widely as it could 
 be opened. It is not every day that a bank, in 
 the Spice Islands, gets a deposit of nineteen 
 hundred solid English sovereigns. I will wager 
 that Heer De Haan treated himself to an extra 
 bottle of wine on the strength of it. Anyhow, 
 when I saw him in the hotel, after the tardy nine 
 o'clock dinner, that tried my British stomach so 
 sorely, he was seated in a long chair with a big 
 Sumatra cigar, looking as sleek and sleepy and 
 happy as a sea-cow in a sandy bay. 
 
 Next morning Miss Van den Hofdyk came to see 
 the Kris-Girl, and to thank her. Nothing but 
 Cristina's innate fine courtesy, I know, prevented 
 her from clearing away into the nutmeg forests, 
 to escape the ordeal ; this part of her feats was 
 always detestable to her. She succeeded in 
 keeping Richilda from any very violent demonstra- 
 tions of affection, and as for gifts such as the 
 Rubber Queen and others had pressed upon her 
 (gifts that she always handed over to Mrs. Ash, 
 when she could not possibly escape them) Richilda 
 Van den Hofdyk had quite enough good Dutch 
 thrift about her to keep her from any danger of 
 committing such extravagance.
 
 ABOUT A GOLDEN NUTMEG 93 
 
 She was anxious to know how the miracle had 
 been worked. 
 
 " Tell me, you wonder-girl," she said, " how 
 did you think these things ? Is there some sense 
 you have that no other " 
 
 " Nonsense," said Cristina, crisply. " Here it 
 is in a nutshell a nutmeg shell, if you like. Of 
 course, I saw all that stuff about deducting and 
 following out wasn't going to bring you anywhere, 
 so I just went down to the kampong and found 
 out what woman your Uncle Hendrik was in love 
 with, in those days. When I heard it was a Malay, 
 of course I knew he wouldn't tell her where 
 anything was. But all the same, she must have 
 been about the house enough to know when he 
 went to look for the stuff, if he had any hidden 
 away. So I fished. And I had a bite. And 
 then one only had to reel in the line. That's all." 
 
 " It" is magic," said Richilda, sentimentally, 
 holding the Kris-Girl's hand. 
 
 " It's something a lot more uncommon, and 
 that's common sense," said Cristina. 
 
 Richilda left at last, declaring her intention of 
 breaking the news to her mother that day, and 
 buying a steamer ticket on the morrow. 
 
 " What can I do for you ? " she asked Cristina, 
 with perhaps a little too much grace. 
 
 " Send me a ticket for your first big night," 
 said Cristina. 
 
 " I will send you fifty ! " promised Richilda, 
 liberally.
 
 94 KRIS-GIHL 
 
 But I happen to know that when Cristina met 
 her two years later, coming out of the Duchess 
 Theatre in Piccadilly, she had lost all recollection 
 of the " Kris-Girl." There is nothing people hate 
 more than the remembrance of having been 
 helped out of a difficulty.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 
 
 Is there anything in all the world so weary as a 
 Dutch -Indian hotel ? 
 
 The " Daendels," of Macassar, was buried in its 
 afternoon sleep. A baking wind blew down its 
 dry stone corridors ; the blinds in the cloistered 
 archwaj^s clicked and swung. Through the slats 
 of the blinds the glare of the central courtyard 
 sifted in. It was a Sahara of a courtyard, wide 
 and dry, and coloured like the cheap blue and 
 yellow Bible pictures of one's youth ; and it had 
 a Biblical sort of stone-curb well in the middle, 
 which wanted nothing but a Rebecca and a camel 
 or two to be complete. Behind Venetian shutter 
 doors, or stretched on long-armed planter chairs, 
 the guests of the " Daendels " slept. The German 
 manager, in his Pornpeian-bath bedroom, slept. 
 The native clerk, in his official tank ; the native 
 " boys," under the arch of the great stone stair- 
 case, lay coiled and piled and sleeping. 
 
 The locust that ought to be called the brain- 
 fever locust, whether it is or not. had started, as 
 96
 
 96 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 usual, to celebrate the hottest hour with a con- 
 tinuous, shrieking zizz-zizz, somewhere among the 
 trees out at the back. It had all the sounds to 
 itself ; otherwise, the " Daendels," at this dead 
 hour of three, was still as the Sleeping Beauty's 
 palace. 
 
 I wandered down the interminable stone galleries 
 alone of all these black and white human beings 
 awake, alone wearing the dress of daylight hours. 
 The restless English blood, no more resembling 
 Dutch blood in its flow, than the swift far-running 
 rivers of England resemble Holland's dank canals, 
 kept me on my feet and moving, in the midst of 
 a world of dreams. But, for all occupation I could 
 find, I might as well have been dreaming with 
 the rest. There was no business to be done 
 outside at this hour ; no one inside or outside to 
 talk with ; nothing anywhere to read but Dutch 
 papers full of -ik's and -je's. The stodginess, the 
 wearif ulness, the barrenness, were a British Sunday 
 afternoon raised to the nth power . . . and it 
 happened every day ! 
 
 There is a breaking point for every strain. I 
 snatched my sun-helmet, and fled into the Hooge 
 Pad. 
 
 Well ! it was better ! Down the great white 
 road, beneath the immense kanaris, rolled a flood 
 of traffic jangling karettas drawn by rat-like 
 horses, and conveying jolly-looking half-castes in 
 clean muslins ; bicycles ridden by natives and 
 " breeds " of all sorts ; buffaloes in carts ; strings
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 97 
 
 of blue-clad Chinese loaded with fruit, and wearing 
 the identical umbrella hat that we all remember 
 in the picture books ; Malays and Indians selling 
 hot fritters, selling curry, custard apples, ice- water, 
 pink poison in dirty blue glasses, fowls, slippers, 
 gold embroidery, dried fish. A motor-car buzzed 
 past, carrying more than a full load of Celebese 
 princesses in sarongs of gorgeous silks ; a party 
 of Chinese women in blue coats and black satin 
 trousers drove by. One white man, distinguished 
 by a fine grey beard, an aristocratic countenance, 
 and a suit of green cotton pyjamas, went down 
 the road on a tricycle I had not thought there 
 was a tricycle left in the world. For the rest, 
 the Hooge Pad hummed and clattered and smoked 
 with native and coloured traffic only. 
 
 I tramped along in the hot wind and the shade 
 that was not shady, smoking for the sake of some- 
 thing to do, watching the traffic, and going nowhere 
 that I knew of. I felt as usual, save for a little 
 melancholy that had hung about me since my 
 ship put out from Banda Neira, a week or two 
 before. I looked as usual at least, no one had 
 suggested, by word or by demeanour, that 
 there was anything peculiar about my appearance. 
 I slept, ate, read, did business as usual. And 
 yet I was going mad. 
 
 This time yesterday I had been sane. To-day 
 I was crazy. I could not believe it, and yet proof 
 had been forced upon me. 
 
 In the early morning, walking towards the 
 7
 
 98 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 harbour for exercise, I had strayed on to the long 
 wooden quays that are the pleasantest walking- 
 ground when space permits in the town. The 
 breeze comes up very fresh from the sea there ; 
 the ships lie at anchor and alongside, full of quaint 
 sights and strange peoples ; there are (an impor- 
 tant point) fewer, much fewer smells than in the 
 crowded town itself. I was swinging along the 
 quay, watching the big Duymaer Van Rumphius 
 sling out her gangways, listening carelessly to the 
 songs of the native sailors as they lowered away, 
 and thinking if I was thinking of anything 
 about Banda Neira and the wicked cone of the 
 Goonong Api against a sunset sky when I saw, 
 coming down the jetty within a few yards of ine 
 " Mabel ! 
 
 Now Mabel was in her grave since ninety-three. 
 She had had an attack of bronchial influenza that 
 left her out of health ; a relative, going to take up 
 an official post in Singapore, had insisted she 
 should winter there with himself and his wife. 
 Mabel had gone, amiably, though unwillingly 
 she was one of that race of gentle and yielding 
 girls, now extinct as the dodo, who always did 
 whatever any male creature, armed with ever so 
 little family or friendly authority, told them to do. 
 She was to be away for the winter, and we were 
 to be married on her return. 
 
 She never returned. The visit lengthened into 
 spring, into summer, into autumn. Then came 
 a cable. She was dead.
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 99 
 
 I wrote, a short, wretched letter blotted with 
 boyish tears. It crossed one from the relatives, 
 short and wretched also, tear-stained also. Mabel 
 had died of cholera. She was buried in the local 
 cemetery. They sent me a photograph of the 
 grave, with the name and date on it. 
 
 I had loved her very dearly ; her death, for the 
 time being, broke my life in two. One recovers 
 from any sorrow in time ; I recovered from mine. 
 But it left me changed : a sober, grave young 
 man of business, attending strictly to work, little 
 interested in anything outside. ... I will not say 
 that there were no women in my life ; but, in the 
 common phrase, none of them " mattered." Till 
 I took the long journey that was to lay the 
 foundation of a new Eastern trade for our house, 
 no woman, or girl, had given me an unhappy hour. 
 
 I had loved Mabel, as I say, very dearly ; in- 
 deed, after a fashion, I loved her yet. I was glad 
 of it. It seemed likely to save me from the 
 humiliation^ that waits on affection unreturned. 
 Deep-rooted in my heart was the conviction that 
 no girl in the world, no matter how fascinating she 
 might seem, could ever in reality be so sweet, so 
 pure, so lovable and loving as my dead Mabel. 
 Even when I found myself obliged to get away 
 from Banda, and return to affairs of business in 
 Macassar as fast as the steamers would take me 
 even then I found that my sleep had grown 
 restless, that I could not settle to reading, and 
 that meals were always too soon and too long for
 
 100 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 me I put it down largely to the climate. There 
 was no use in putting it down to anything else. 
 And, with the fair, distant shadow of Mabel as my 
 guardian, I knew without arguing the matter out 
 in words, that I should be able to keep it at that 
 climate. 
 
 I cannot hope to explain what I felt when I 
 saw SAW Mabel, her very own self, walking 
 down the Macassar quays. 
 
 At first I thought I had got a touch of sun ; 
 but then, I told myself, I should be feeling the other 
 symptoms sickness, faintness, headache. I didn't 
 feel any of them. I was only conscious of 
 being stunned by this sudden uprising of the 
 utterly impossible. 
 
 " Good God ! " I said to myself, and then 
 " I must be mad." I stared at the slender figure 
 in white, as I suppose a man must stare at a ghost. 
 
 From the deck of the steamer, I watched the 
 figure advance along the quays . It walked steadily, 
 looking neither to right nor left. The face 
 Mabel's face, pouted mouth, pointed chin, large, 
 very brilliant brown eyes was slightly drooped. 
 That was a habit of hers heavens, how well I 
 remembered it ! The figure walked with a slight 
 swing from the hips Mabel's walk. 
 
 She came on, without pausing, passed the boat, 
 and 
 
 " My God, she'll be gone ! " I thought, and 
 made a wild dash to the gangway. It was raised ! 
 
 I don't know what operation of ship business
 
 101 
 
 had required the raising at that moment the 
 ship was not due to sail till next day but I knew 
 better than to remonstrate with Dutch steamship 
 officers about anything concerning their work. 
 One might quite as profitably remonstrate with a 
 cargo winch in full swing. I fled aft to the second- 
 class, found another gangway, took it in three 
 jumps, and started in pursuit of the slim white 
 figure that I could see some distance up the quays. 
 I caught it in a minute or two and it was another 
 woman ! 
 
 Mabel had vanished as utterly as if the grave 
 that had given her forth had yawned in the middle 
 of the jetty and swallowed her up again. 
 
 I remember that I put down my helmet very 
 tight on my head before I started back to the 
 town. " This comes of walking about at three in 
 the afternoon," I thought ; and then " Non- 
 sense the jetty is full of white people." I felt 
 as a man feels when he has had just two glasses 
 of whisky too much. Things seemed unreal. 
 People passed me like flat shadows ; I could not 
 feel that they had backs or other sides. The 
 traffic in the main roadway seemed to flow past 
 me as a river flows past a stone ; I was not part 
 of it, or of earth. I have not the least recollec- 
 tion of hailing a pony karetta, but I was in one 
 presently, and bouncing along through the tangle 
 of buffaloes, water-sellers, giant-hatted Chinese, 
 half-castes slip-slopping along the pavement. 
 The driver put me down at the " Daendels," and
 
 102 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 I went straight to the big marble staircase, and 
 waked up the mandoer (hall-porter) with my foot. 
 
 He awoke reluctantly, and stared at me with 
 sullen eyes, which brightened instantly at the 
 sight of a florin in my hand. 
 
 " Who is the best doctor in Macassar ? " I 
 asked him. 
 
 " Titan, best doctor the Tuan Merkus. He will 
 sleep this time, Tuan." 
 
 " What's his address ? " I asked. 
 
 The Malay gave it, staring. Malays are in- 
 veterate gossips ; I knew, inevitably, that the 
 occurrence would furnish talk for all the servants 
 of that end of Macassar, in the grand exchange of 
 chatter that goes on every night. Doubtless the 
 boys of the Tuan Merkus would have their 
 word too. It could not be helped. I was not 
 going to go about with this thing on my mind a mo- 
 ment longer than could be helped. 
 
 The waiting karetta galloped me away to the 
 other side of the town among numberless small 
 stone villas, each with its pillared stoep, its 
 stone vases of ferns and flowers set out in the stone 
 courtyard, its stone or tile paved hall visible 
 through wide glass doors ajar . . . There seems 
 something about the use of stone and tile that is 
 inevitably bound up with the Dutch character. 
 No Dutchman still more surely, no Dutchwoman 
 can live happily in a house that cannot be hosed 
 ("own every day like a stable or a gaol. 
 
 Heer Merkus, used, no doubt, to invasions of
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 103 
 
 the sacred siesta hour that would be tolerated by 
 no other Dutchman came out of the inner room, 
 yawning, and in pyjamas. He was, like almost all 
 Colonial Dutch, very tall, very massive, fair, and 
 calm. He dropped into a rocking chair, pointed 
 to one for myself, and asked, sleepily, 
 
 ' ' Some emergency case ? Perhaps my lady, your 
 wife " 
 
 " I want to consult you on my own account," I 
 said. 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 Heer Doktor Merkus directed a calm, scrutinis- 
 ing gaze upon my face. He had looked more or 
 less through me before ; he looked at me now. 
 People who disturb other people in siesta time, 
 about the Dutch Malayan colonies, are supposed 
 not to do so for a trifle. 
 
 " You look to be healthy," he stated. There 
 was no reproach in the remark ; Heer Merkus 
 merely suspended his opinion. 
 
 " Do you see anything abnormal about me ? " I 
 questioned. " Look well. " 
 
 The calm, bluish eyes fixed me as if they never 
 meant to detach themselves again. 
 
 "No," came the answer. " You have not 
 drunk. You are not unsleeping. You can eat. 
 You do not suffer pain. Your pulse " 
 
 He took my hand. 
 
 "There has been recently some disturbance of 
 the nerves. You have been frighted, is it not 
 true ? "
 
 104 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " I have," I said. " That's why I am here. I 
 want to know if you think I'm going mad." 
 
 Over the broad, pink countenance of Heer 
 Doktor Merkus dawned a certain brightness. 
 Mental cases are sometimes paying, always 
 interesting. To a general practitioner immersed 
 in a monotonous round of babies, fevers, chronic 
 dyspepsias, and minor accidents, a mental case 
 comes as a breath of fresh wind. 
 
 " What are the symptoms ? " he asked, almost 
 briskly. 
 
 " There's only one," I said. " I've just seen a 
 dead person on the K.P.M. jetty." 
 
 " Yes ? The dead person looked how ? " 
 
 " Quite alive." 
 
 " Man or woman ? " 
 
 "Woman. The girl I was going to marry 
 fifteen years ago ; she died." 
 
 " Yes ? She had any extraordinary circum- 
 stances attending her ? " 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 " She had any dog, pig, snake, something by 
 that kind ? " 
 
 " No. I don't drink, Heer Doktor." 
 
 " You do not look it, but it is hard always to 
 be sure. She had any bright light, any cloud ? " 
 
 " No. Nothing fancy of any kind. She was 
 just walking along the jetty like you or me." 
 
 " The other people, they noticed her ? " 
 
 " I I can't say they did." 
 
 " No. You have heard her speak ? "
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 105 
 
 " She didn't speak," I said, and then pulled 
 myself up. It was only at this moment that I 
 recollected hearing her call "Jack ! Jack ! " to 
 some invisible dog that had evidently strayed 
 away. It was a funny thing to have imagined. 
 
 " Please to be very careful. This is impor- 
 tant." 
 
 " I think she did say something just ' Jack,' ' 
 I told him. 
 
 "Yes." Heer Doktor Merkus deliberately 
 picked up my card from the marble table at his 
 side, and studied it. 
 
 " J. E. Garden. The J. stands for which ? " 
 
 " John." 
 
 " Or other words, Jack ? " 
 
 " Yes, but I think she was calling a dog." 
 
 " You have told me that she was not by any 
 dog attended." 
 
 " Neither was she." 
 
 " Yes." Merkus detached his gaze from my 
 face, considerately. 
 
 "I mean," I explained carefully, "that I saw 
 no dog with her." 
 
 " Yes. I understand." Merkus was so con- 
 siderate that I could have smacked his head. 
 
 " Is this the first time you have seen visions, 
 heard voices ? " 
 
 Put in that way, it sounded appalling. I felt 
 myself grow white as I answered 
 
 " Certainly it is. Do you think badly of it, 
 doctor ? "
 
 106 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " I do not think yet. I will now ask you some 
 question." 
 
 A catechism followed, embracing my family 
 history, personal constitution, and ordinary and 
 extraordinary habits, down to the smallest detail. 
 Through it all something that was in the catechism, 
 but not of it, flowed secretly and silently. The 
 Heer Doktor was trying something ; I could not 
 tell what. I grew tired out at last. I was suffering 
 a severe strain, and the shock of seeing Mabel had 
 left its traces. At the four hundredth minute 
 question, I snapped. 
 
 " That's enough," I said. " I won't be badgered 
 any more. You've got plenty to go on." Then I 
 apologised, realising that I had been rude. 
 
 The apology was received with a bow and a 
 smile. Heer Doktor Merkus seemed rather 
 pleased about something. I realised, with a shock, 
 that I had been put through something corres- 
 ponding to the American " Third Degree," and 
 had given the expected reaction. 
 
 " What am I to do 1 " I said. " What do you 
 think about it ? " 
 
 Merkus was busj* with the neatest of little tablets 
 and pencils. 
 
 " You will have this prescription made," he 
 answered. "You shall not smoke much, and 
 drinking you must avoid. You are not sleeping 
 well ? " 
 
 " Not very," I said. " But that was before 
 it has been some time "
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 107 
 
 " Yes. This other prescription you will take 
 for night. You will not be excited of ai^thing.- 
 You will have quiet, agreeable society." 
 
 I saw what he was coming at. 
 
 " The society of relation is always the most 
 agreeable." 
 
 I did not answer. 
 
 " Your relation are not in this India ? " 
 
 " They are all at home." 
 
 " Yes. You are making a long stay here ? " 
 
 " You don't think I'm fit for an asylum, do 
 you ? " I asked bluntly. 
 
 ' ' Xee ! Nee ! Mr. Garden, you must not take 
 up me so. I wish only to say that the heats of 
 Celebes are not good for nerve disorder ; rather 
 they produce them. You have without doubt 
 heard of the ' run-amuck ' that is common among 
 the natives of Malaysia, but above all it is common 
 here in Celebes. Celebes is not healthy. It has 
 disturbed your nerve. I prescribe these medicines 
 not only, but a change, so soon as Yes, this side 
 door goes into the main avenue ; you will better 
 take it. Thank you You have your Tcaretta to 
 wait ? the sun is yet Good-day." 
 
 " So that's the verdict," I said to myself, as 1 
 drove along through the glancing shade and sun 
 of the great canary trees, down the dead-asleep 
 avenues of the residential quarter. " So that's 
 what he thinks." 
 
 A Macassar horse, harnessed to a small gover- 
 ness-cart full of native ladies dressed in splendid
 
 108 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Dongola silks, went slap-bang down the road, 
 fighting and boxing the ground as only a Macassar 
 horse can. A string of Chinese who had appar- 
 ently escaped from a willow-pattern plate padded 
 silently by in the dust. Rattle, jingle, bounce, 
 my karetta fled down the sun-spotted avenues. 
 There was something restorative in the look of 
 these now familiar sights. It seemed, after all, 
 an agreeable, everyday sort of world, where un- 
 heard-of things didn't really happen. 
 
 " I'm damned if I am f " I said out loud. The 
 Malay driver took no notice, beyond asking where 
 he was to go next. I told him to leave me on the 
 wharf. I was resolved to reconstruct the scene 
 of my vision, and see whether it would be repeated. 
 
 I walked up and down the wharf till I got tired ; 
 I saw two boats come in, and one go out ; I waited 
 till the sun set, and the genteel inhabitants of 
 the town came forth in the brief butterfly splendour 
 of their evening dress for the ceremonial drive. 
 Then I went back to the " Daendels." The vision 
 had not reappeared. 
 
 "There's nothing really to worry about," I 
 thought. " Nothing in the world. Probably 
 Merkus is right, and the heat has upset me. Any- 
 how, things like that happen quite often. The 
 records of the Society of Psychological Research 
 have got 'em by the hundred." 
 
 I went to bed, and had a good night perhaps, 
 because I had had several bad ones lately. Next 
 morning, while I was tying my tie before a mirror
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 109 
 
 that was placed in the one spot where no light 
 could reach it, according to the inflexible rule of 
 hotels (why do they do it, will someone tell me ?) 
 Merkus, quite suddenly, came into my head again. 
 I saw the way he looked at me when I made the 
 mistake about the dog. I saw the considerate 
 expression, the soothing manner in which he 
 received my explanation, the deft change of 
 subject. ... I saw, I felt, the dead wall that stands, 
 in talk, in discussion, in matters of truth and 
 untruth, between the sane and the insane. 
 
 I cannot express the horror with which it smote 
 me. 
 
 At breakfast time, I fancied that the guests were 
 looking at me more than they had done. I 
 thought the manager, from his distant table, was 
 casting curious glances. . . . 
 
 " But they think like that ! " I remembered. 
 " They think that people are watching and per- 
 secuting and spying." Then it occurred to me 
 that I must not let Merkus know of these ideas. 
 Then it occurred, again, that lunatics were secre- 
 tive and cunning. Was I growing secretive and 
 cunning ? 
 
 The piece of prikkadel dropped from my 
 fork. The manager was coming my way ! 
 
 " He wants to know if I am comfortable," I 
 thought, and helped myself to more prikkadel 
 minced chicken, done up in a way that I have 
 wished they knew in other countries. 
 
 I do not know if the manager was born a
 
 110 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Dutchman, a German, or even a Swiss or an 
 Italian, nor does it matter. There is only one race 
 among foreign hotel managers, and that is their 
 own. They are all the same manager. Every- 
 one knows their white waistcoats, their short 
 legs, their high shiny foreheads, the hard un- 
 blinking stare of their stony pale eyes, that look 
 at you with a look that has had suspicion stamped 
 and branded into it, through years of dealing with 
 mixed humanity even while the ready tongue is 
 uttering politenesses and offering service. 
 
 The manager of the ' ' Daendels " was a manager 
 and he looked at me like one. 
 
 " You like your rooms ? " he began. 
 
 I had been right after all. ... Of course, when 
 a guest takes a suite, and pays handsomely, the 
 management are specially interested in him. . . . 
 I answered that I liked my rooms, and helped 
 myself to an iced mangosteen. 
 
 The manager remained, looking genial and sus- 
 picious at the same time, and resting his pink 
 knuckles (they always have pink knuckles) on the 
 table. 
 
 ''Shall you require it very long ? " he asked. 
 " Because I have an Austrian, an Archduke com- 
 ing in by the Waerwyck, and I should like to know 
 beforehand whether it will be necessary for me 
 to throw two suites into one in another part of 
 the house. Yours is the best. If we should 
 unhappily be losing you 
 
 " You will not have to suffer that unhappi-
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 111 
 
 ness," I said, with the brief bow that ends an 
 interview. The manager smiled with his mouth, 
 his eyes keeping watch, and withdrew. 
 
 Inwardly flaming, but outwardly calm, I 
 finished my meal deliberately, and went into the 
 reading-room, which is, in most Dutch hotels, a 
 scoured and polished wilderness during at least 
 twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four. 
 
 " That damned doctor ! " was the matter of 
 my musings, as I walked up and down, my boots 
 clicking on the parquet. " Now I wonder what 
 will be the next ? " 
 
 I did not have to wonder long. In the course 
 of the afternoon, I received an official-looking 
 paper from the Lieutenant-Governor's office. His 
 Excellency, it seemed, had withdrawn the per- 
 mission without which no foreigner may remain 
 over a day in the country. I was requested to 
 remove by the next steamer no reasons given. 
 
 I should be sorry, in cold blood, to write down 
 just what I said of the Lieutenant Governor, and 
 of Dutch-colonial government in general. 
 
 Somehow, the fit of rage into which I had 
 fallen, cleared my head, and I perceived that 
 whatever I might have seen or not seen down on 
 the wharf, whatever Merkus might have believed, 
 said, or circulated, I was not mad. I clung to 
 that as to a rock. 
 
 Then, how could I account for long-dead Mabel 
 out of her grave, and walking down a steamer 
 wharf in the light of twentieth-century day ?
 
 112 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 I didn't account for it. I went to the post- 
 office, sent a telegram to the steamer that I knew 
 was lying at Banda, and asked Cristina to come 
 to Macassar by that boat. I knew that she and 
 Mrs. Ash intended returning sooner or later, so 
 there was nothing very unreasonable about the 
 request. I ended it with " Bring your kris." 
 
 " That'll fetch her in two senses," I said to 
 myself, signing the radio. Then I went back to 
 the " Daendels." I had informed the manager 
 who, of course, was entirely ignorant of the arrival 
 of any Government message that I intended 
 going on to Borneo by the boat that left at the 
 end of the week, my next destination being the 
 big oil town on the east coast. I knew that I 
 should be allowed to go, as Borneo is under yet 
 another Governor. They have them to shy 
 sticks at, down in the Eastern Seas. 
 
 A day or two later, the Van Outhoorn came in, 
 and I was on the jetty to meet her. Cristina, in 
 the most fascinating of her many pink dresses 
 she had a love for pink waved to me from the 
 gangway, and so strange to relate did Mrs. 
 Ash. The manner of the salutation was charac- 
 teristic of each, Cristina waved a handkerchief 
 dainty and delicate as the wing of a white butter- 
 fly. Mrs. Ash napped a large brown volume, 
 which I afterwards discovered to be somebody's 
 Journal of Arctic Research. One of the iceberg 
 and Polar Bear pictures fell out of it, and fluttered 
 down on the quay, where it came to rest on the
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 113 
 
 top of a crate of custard apples that were literally 
 melting away in the sun. I wondered vaguely 
 whether, if Cristina took a fancy for Arctic travel, 
 Mrs. Ash would bring books on Borneo and India 
 with her, and read them in the midst of the 
 eternal snows ? I was quite sure that, whatever 
 she might do, she would not flatter the Arctic by 
 taking any notice of it. . . . 
 
 The " Daendels " seemed a pleasanter place 
 that evening. The dreary waste of reading-room 
 suddenly blossomed into a drawing-room a 
 homely drawing-room you almost expected a 
 fire. . . . 
 
 Cristina, in another pink thing I recall that it 
 had edges you could see through, and was buttoned 
 with roses, or tried to make you think it was, 
 looked amazingly pretty. Mrs. Ash was dressed 
 with exceeding respectability in thin black and a 
 real cap: she had mittens, too when does one 
 see caps and mittens now-a-days ? 
 
 Somehow, the look of the two sitting there, 
 with their sewing and their books, made me realise 
 sharply that I was not a married man. I do not 
 say, made me realise that I was a bachelor. No 
 man minds being a bachelor. There is a jolliness, 
 a freedom, a flavour of pipes and slippers and 
 beer, about the very word. . . . 
 
 But, as I say, there come times in the life of a 
 
 bachelor when he realises that he isn't married. 
 
 That bits of stitchery, and high-heeled shoes set 
 
 comfortably on fenders (I do not suggest that 
 
 8
 
 114 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 there was a fender in the " Daendels : " I only 
 say that there was the atmosphere of one), and 
 easy, leisured talk over the doings of to-day, and 
 the prospects of to-morrow's doing, don't come 
 into his life. You can be a bachelor all day with 
 perfect comfort ; you can be a bachelor, very 
 satisfactorily, on all nights when there is enter- 
 tainment of a,ny kind. But on the nights when 
 you are at home, in your boarding-house, cham- 
 bers, hotel, what not, you are not a bachelor. 
 You are just a man who hasn't got a wife. 
 
 Talking things over is the especial sport and 
 pastime of the married. If you talk things over 
 at your club, you will find yourself quarantined 
 for a bore. If you discuss your doings of to-day 
 and to-morrow at a dinner party, you will block 
 the courses, and induce your partner to wish for 
 3 r our speedy death. But your wife actually wants 
 to know queer being ! what you said to the 
 general manager, and what he answered, and 
 how } T OU then put the matter, briefly and ably, to 
 him, and how he hadn't a word to say. She is 
 excited to hear that you almost lost the train 
 coming home, but relieved on knowing that you 
 managed to catch it by running all the way down 
 the stairs after the lift was closed. She debates 
 anxiously the question of thin overcoat or none, 
 now that the days are "drawing out"; she 
 discusses with serious consideration the right 
 place to sow the scarlet runners. . . . 
 
 Well ! on that still, hot evening in the library
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 115 
 
 of the " Daendels," in company of the two women 
 reading and stitching and ready to talk over my 
 affairs, I realised, with the unpleasant feeling 
 that attends the putting down of a foot on a 
 non-existent step, that I was not a married man. 
 That the loss of Mabel, coming at a critical age, 
 and turning away my attention from all thoughts 
 of " settling down," had caused me to miss some- 
 thing, of which Mabel herself was only a part 
 something, perhaps, that mattered something 
 represented by those dresses and books and bits 
 of sewing, and other trivial little affairs, that 
 mounted up into a sum by no means trivial. 
 
 I had actually forgotten that Cristina was 
 speaking. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Garden, after putting our pro- 
 gramme out by ten days, I hope you've furnished 
 yourself with a suitable excuse." 
 
 " Yes," I answered. " You can take your kris 
 out of the sheath : it's going to be wanted I 
 think." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Cristina. She did not look at 
 Mrs. Ash, and she was not near enough to that 
 respected lady to kick her on the shins, but 
 nevertheless some signal must have passed. For 
 Mrs. Ash got up, gathered her books, papers, and 
 work together, and trippeted neatly out of the 
 room. When she was young, I will swear she 
 " tripped," like those Dickensian and Thackerayan 
 damsels who were deliberately taught (I have it 
 on the authority of one of themselves) to put the
 
 116 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 toe down before the heel in walking. Look at 
 the engravings of the period, and at the chisel- 
 shaped slipper pointed out under the crinoline ; 
 realise that the girls of that day were actually 
 compelled to walk like fowls, rather than planti- 
 grade animals ; and thank your stars that your 
 sister or your sweetheart "flourishes," as they 
 say of historic characters, in the age of the suffra- 
 gette. 
 
 Mrs. Ash, in the sixties, had been taught to 
 " trip." Now she trippeted. Although the action 
 was not ungraceful, and suggested, somewhat 
 pleasantly, an atmosphere of dried pot-pourris 
 and faded looks of beauty, of crystal chandeliers, 
 cabbage-rose carpets, and slanted Venetian blinds, 
 one could realise that it was not eminently adapted 
 for climbing tropical mountains and racing about 
 lakes and ruins. 
 
 " She's wonderfully plucky to stick it the way 
 she does," I said, as the gauzy black figure vanished 
 down the verandah. 
 
 " Ash ? She's a dear, a darling little wooden 
 Mrs. Japheth out of the ark ; I wouldn't change 
 her for worlds." 
 
 " We're awfully liberal with our ' worlds ' ; 
 but I don't suppose Mrs. Ash would give you 
 much for another world or so." 
 
 " She, poor dear ? she wouldn't give you a 
 half-hardy bulb for a dozen of them. It's less 
 world, not more, that she wants . . . but about 
 your affairs ? "
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 117 
 
 I should have been content to leave them for 
 a little ; it had seemed, in that moment, as if we 
 were nearing the debatable ground of Cristina 
 and her travels, but . . . 
 
 " I will tell you from the beginning to the end," 
 I said, and I did. 
 
 "Now tell me," I said, "am I mad, or has 
 something happened that is out of the order of 
 nature ? " 
 
 Cristina got on her feet, and began marching 
 up and down the library, hands thoughtfully 
 clasped behind her back, head a little raised. She 
 walked so for quite ten minutes. At the end of 
 that time she said " I am glad you sent for me," 
 and then went on walking in silence. The even- 
 ing traffic of Macassar whirled madly up and 
 down the Nooge Pad outside. Carriages, motor- 
 cars, karettas, conveyed tall, intensely clean 
 Dutchmen in white suits, and massive Dutch 
 ladies in Paris dresses and hats, to call upon their 
 friends or to see the one small picture show of 
 which Macassar (very literally) boasts. Endless, 
 rainbow-coloured native crowds flowed by in the 
 electric light that made the town as bright as 
 day. From the immense dining-room of the 
 " Daendels " came clinking of glasses and plates, 
 and loud talking in iks and je's. A giant lizard, 
 somewhere about the cornice, swelled out its 
 throat, remarked malignantly " Tuc-too ! ">[and 
 then subsided into silence. 
 
 As if that had been the signal for which she was
 
 118 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 waiting, Cristina stopped her walk, flowed into a 
 rocking-chair (she was incapable of " dropping ") 
 and fixed me with her bright blue eyes. 
 
 " There are some things I want to know," she 
 said. " First, tell me all you can about Mabel." 
 
 I told her the sad little story, leaving nothing 
 out. She listened to it without emotion, which 
 somewhat surprised me. I should have thought 
 that any woman, anywhere, would have found 
 this tale of love and separation and death appeal- 
 ing. 
 
 " She is cold," I thought. " Bright and keen 
 as the blade she is nicknamed after but cold as 
 the steel itself." 
 
 Well, it was nothing to me if she was as cold 
 as the icebergs in Mrs. Ash's misplaced book. It 
 was with Cristina's intellect that I had to deal, 
 not with her heart. 
 
 She crossed her knees lightly, and regarded the 
 point of the uppermost shoe with some interest. 
 Like all women who have pretty feet, she was 
 very choice with her shoes. This one was of 
 golden bronze, with a needle toe, and an abso- 
 lutely wicked heel, and it made her foot look 
 small enough for a fairy. 
 
 " Tell me this," she said, twittering the shoe 
 about, so as to catch the rays of the electric light 
 on its golden polish, " when you saw her on the 
 jetty, what was she wearing ? " 
 
 " Wearing ? " I answered, somewhat astonished 
 by the frivolity of the question. " Why, what
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 119 
 
 other women wear, I suppose. I did not notice 
 anything in particular." 
 
 " She did not seem different from the rest ? " 
 " Xo. She wasn't wearing a white robe and a 
 palm, if that's what you mean, and I didn't 
 observe a harp. She was just dressed like a 
 woman." 
 
 " Had she a hat on ?" 
 
 " Yes the sort of hat that other people have." 
 " That would be a large, deep, waste-paper- 
 basket shape of hat," said Cristina. " And her 
 dress would be something slim and white, and not 
 very noticeable. This year's fashions are very 
 simple." 
 
 " I suppose so," I said, wondering what she was 
 driving at. 
 
 " You say she died in eighteen ninety-three ? " 
 " That was the year," I said. Ninety-three ! 
 Ninety-three ! Again through my brain sang the 
 wild, wind-like music of Stevenson's lament 
 
 " Sing me a tale of a lad that ia gone 
 Say, could that lad be I ? " 
 
 No, he was not I. Twenty-four and thirty-nine 
 what had they in common ? No one thing 
 except love for, reverence for the memory of, lost 
 Mabel. 
 
 " Do you remember the fashions of ninety- 
 three ? " asked the Kris-Girl, quietly and dis- 
 tinctly. 
 
 I saw in a flash what she was driving at.
 
 120 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Why why they were very extravagant, 
 were they not ? " I stammered, still a trifle 
 dazzled with this new light. 
 
 " I can tell you just what they were. I was 
 only nine years old then, but I can recall exactly 
 what my mother and my young aunts used to 
 wear. They wore tiny close-fitting toques or 
 bonnets, such as no girl ever wears now. They 
 had immense sleeves, stiffened out like wings, and 
 their skirts were sometimes seven or eight yards 
 round, flapping all over the place. They looked 
 as unlike the girls of the present days as " 
 
 " I see what you mean," I burst in. 
 
 " I'm not quite sure that I see myself yet," 
 she said slowly. " But I know one thing you 
 might have had a vision, or call it an illusion, of 
 Mabel dressed as you saw her last, but I really 
 do not see how you could have a vision of her 
 dressed in the fashions of to-day, which she never 
 even dreamed of, and which you wouldn't know 
 how to reconstruct out of your own head anyhow. 
 If the girl you saw on the jetty looked like other 
 women, depend on it, she was like other women. 
 If she'd been dressed as your fiancee used to dress, 
 she would have stood out from the crowd like a 
 griffin or a phoanix, or any other fabulous monster 
 you like to name. And everyone on the jetty 
 would have been staring at her." 
 
 " Do you know," I said, staring at her, " that 
 with all the things Dr. Merkus asked yesterday, 
 he never even hinted at that ! "
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 121 
 
 "No ? " said Cristina, with a small fine smile 
 that did not compliment the doctor. " I suppose 
 he had made up his mind on the whole question 
 before he began. Now let us get down to essen- 
 tials." 
 
 " Your way," I said, with a touch of admira- 
 tion. 
 
 " No. The commonsense way. I've no patent 
 on common sense. What do you in the bottom 
 of your heart, suppose you saw ? " 
 
 " I haven't an idea. It was because my mind 
 was such a blank that I " 
 
 " One always has an idea. Cut the way clear 
 to it give Truth a hand up from the bottom of 
 the well." 
 
 "It's impossible " I began, wavering. 
 
 "Nevermind. Goon." 
 
 " Well, if I think anything, I think it was she, 
 but I know it couldn't be." 
 
 Cristina smiled. 
 
 " You see, you had the idea. Now let's go into 
 it. You will not mind my asking some questions 
 about her Mabel I don't know her other 
 name." 
 
 " Mabel is good enough," I said. What did it 
 matter whether a dead little girl were " Miss'd " 
 or not ? 
 
 " How old was she when she died ? " 
 
 "Not quite nineteen." 
 
 " How old when you last saw her ? " 
 
 " Seventeen and a half."
 
 122 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 "Poor baby," said Cristina, with such gentle- 
 ness that my iceberg theory suddenly flew to the 
 four winds of heaven to collect itself again, 
 however, before very long. 
 
 " She was very sorry to part with you ? " 
 
 "Very! Very!" 
 
 " But she was well taken care of, and there 
 were pleasant people with her ? " 
 
 " Yes. Her own relations. Her aunt and 
 uncle, and the secretaries. He took a brace of 
 secretaries with him. They were all of them as 
 kind to Mabel as they could be. She wrote to 
 me about it. She had a very happy voyage 
 poor child ! " 
 
 " Would it hurt you too much," asked Cristina, 
 " to show me some of her letters ? " 
 
 " How did you know I had them with me ? " 
 
 " I thought you were that kind of man," said 
 Cristina, very simply. 
 
 " It would not hurt me. These things don't 
 hurt after the first two or three years. They 
 leave you changed yes but you take up life 
 again." 
 
 She sat as still as a stone, looking at me. I 
 suddenly remembered the personal application of 
 my words, and wondered if she thought they had 
 been meant for her. I wondered, too, how far 
 they fitted her case. 
 
 I left her there in the big empty reading-room, 
 immobile, with the electric glare from above 
 whitening the locks of her soft dark hair. I won-
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 123 
 
 dered, as I went to my room, what kind of an old 
 woman she would make when it came to the 
 days of real snowy locks ; I wondered who would 
 see that old age. . . . Not the casual acquain- 
 tance of an Eastern tour for certain. 
 
 With the letters I brought back a photograph 
 of Mabel's grave. They were all tied up together 
 in a little Indian box of inlaid sandalwood and 
 silver. It was years since I had opened it ; the 
 papers were yellow with being shut up, and the 
 photograph was turning pale. 
 
 Cristina took the latter out, and examined it 
 In silence. It was a simple thing enough a grave 
 fenced round with iron rails, and headed by a 
 small white cross. The lettering had been new 
 when the photograph was taken ; it stood out 
 very clearly 
 
 "MABEL MEREDITH 
 DIED 29TH NOVEMBER, 1893 
 AGED 18." 
 
 Cristina looked long at the picture. 
 
 " Who wrote the inscription ? " she asked 
 presently. 
 
 " The inscription ? her aunt or her uncle, I 
 suppose. They must have paid for it. The Mere- 
 diths were not were not very well off." 
 
 Cristina said nothing. 
 
 " May I take it to my room with me ? " she 
 asked presently. 
 
 " Certainly you may."
 
 124 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " I wonder, might I ask you " 
 
 " I am sure you might, though I don't know 
 what it is." 
 
 " Don't be too sure. I was going to ask you 
 for some of her letters." 
 
 I hesitated a moment, but no more. 
 
 " There's no reason in the world why you 
 should not see them," I said, putting the box in 
 her hands. She slipped the photograph inside 
 and closed the lid. 
 
 "Good night," she said gravely. "Sleep well, 
 and don't dream of poor little ghosts." The stars 
 showed the flutter of her light dress as she crossed 
 the open courtyard. 
 
 She was not to be seen next morning. I went 
 out to look for curios, in that main street which 
 promises so much, and provides so little, save 
 cheap German crockery and lamps, English 
 cottons of a jolly-Bank-Holiday character and 
 draperies of the kind you can buy much better 
 in Regent Street. I had just refused, for the 
 fifteenth time, the inescapable beaten silver scarf 
 that worries the traveller right through from Port 
 Said to Hong-Kong, and had turned with ex- 
 treme weariness from the five-hundred and 
 fortieth ugly Japanese tray, when I caught a 
 glimpse of Cristina and Mrs. Ash, getting into a 
 karetta at the door of the steamship company's 
 office. The manager came out after them, talk- 
 ing and smiling. I could see at a glance that 
 Cristina had thought it worth while to expend
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 125 
 
 a few of her carefully hoarded fascinations on 
 him. For what reason ? . . . . 
 
 The karetta plunged into the whirlpool of 
 galloping horses, bullock-carts, padding Chinese, 
 slip-slopping Malays, soldiers, hot-pancake sellers, 
 half-naked Dyaks, tall pink Dutchmen dressed in 
 gleaming white. I followed on foot, wondering. 
 I supposed I should be allowed to wonder in- 
 definitely unless, or until, Cristina had finished her 
 work. Somehow, I did not doubt that she would 
 finish it. And all the time, I had not an idea what 
 she was at. 
 
 It was getting dusk when I went in again as 
 much as one ever goes " in," about the tropic 
 world. "In," for this occasion, meant a rock- 
 ing-chair on a white stone terrace (I wonder if 
 the American acquired their rocking-chair habit 
 from the early Dutch settlers ?) with tables in the 
 pleasing shape of mimic liquor-barrels beside me, 
 and drinks thereon. The traffic of the Hooge 
 Pad went rattling and hoofing and chug-chugging 
 by, beneath the cathedral-like arcade of the 
 great kanaris. The sun had set : Macassar was 
 abroad, and you might hope for dinner in the 
 course of some two hours and a half, if you sur- 
 vived. 
 
 I sat there, contented enough, with my cigar 
 and the inevitable liqueur, thinking of I do not 
 quite know what, and enjoying the relief from 
 the shadowy anxiety that had tormented me of 
 late, but that had taken flight beneath the clear
 
 126 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 daylight of Cristina's common sense. Whatever 
 might be the result of the Kris-Girl's investiga- 
 tions, I was satisfied that madness had nothing 
 to do with the thing I had seen. I could not 
 understand the visit to the steamship office un- 
 less, which I didn't believe, it had been uncon- 
 nected with my affair. I put that out of my 
 head, and tried to guess what her next move 
 would be. There was a queer old mandarin in 
 the Chinese quarter, reputed to be something of 
 a wizard, and to know more about the things of 
 the occult world than could be known by people 
 with plain w r hite skins and heads unpigtailed. . . . 
 She might have probably had. . . . 
 
 I cannot say how astonished I was when I saw 
 the thin-edged pink dress beside me, and heard 
 Cristina, unaccompanied for once by the inevit- 
 able Ash speaking. Somehow, I had not ex- 
 pected 
 
 "Mr. Garden," the low, pleasant voice was 
 saying, " I want to tell you that I had rather not 
 go on with that investigation." 
 
 " What ! " was all I found to say. I had risen 
 to my feet, and stood staring at her. It was dark 
 now ; a silver moon, horned like the buffaloes in 
 the Hooge Pad, looked down a long, long way 
 from the tops of the kanaris. Very pale and wan 
 it seemed in the screaming glare of the electric 
 lights. I could not tell whether the Kris-Girl 
 was pale too, or whether it was only the lights 
 that made her look so.
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 127 
 
 " Why do you wish to give it up ? " I asked. 
 
 "I wish to give it up," she repeated. "You 
 may rest assured that you personally are all 
 right. Let it go at that. You won't be sorry." 
 And again, beneath the pitiless clarity of the 
 electrics, I thought I saw her face turn pale. 
 
 ''If it troubles you if it's tiresome " I 
 
 said. 
 
 " It isn't. I am interested. But you would 
 do better to take my advice, and let it go." 
 
 I have no doubt that such situations are com- 
 mon enough ; probably, every man and woman 
 in the world has once, at least, been advised to 
 hold off from some subject of inquiry, because he 
 or she would be better without knowing. It is, 
 without question, a " stock incident " in the 
 drama of life. I could give dozens of instances 
 if I paused to think, and so could you. But I 
 could not nor could you give dozens, half 
 dozens, or even one or two, instances when the 
 advice thus offered was taken. 
 
 I acted like everybody else. I said I would 
 rather know. Who would not run the chance of 
 pinching his fingers in the hinge of a forbidden 
 door, for the certainty of seeing inside ? 
 
 There was a silence of quite half-a-minute. 
 Then Cristina, looking not at me but at the clat- 
 tering stream of Macassar's evening callers, said 
 lightly 
 
 " Why, then, I'll tell you " 
 
 I waited, breathless. What was I going to hear ?
 
 128 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " As soon as I know myself," said Crist ina, and 
 went back into the hotel. 
 
 I lit another cigar, and pondered on the curious 
 ways of women. 
 
 " But she isn't ' a woman,' " protested some 
 inner voice. 
 
 " Why not, pray ? " asked I. 
 
 " She's different," said the voice. 
 
 " They always are ' different ' when it conies to 
 that," said I, and like Mrs. Primrose, for the second 
 time in this history, I " fell into a great fit of 
 laughter." 
 
 "Comes to what?" said the other Garden, 
 who was not laughing at all. " How many 
 women can a man be in love with ? " 
 
 " Oh, damn it, nobody's in love with anybody, 
 that I know of," I said, and the other Garden 
 went out like a candle or as a candle used to 
 do, when we had such things. And I sat on my 
 rocking-chair, swinging about, and thinking of 
 where I was on the map, and wondering why it 
 wasn't stranger. And I thought of R. L. Steven- 
 son's 
 
 " There's nothing under Heaven so blue 
 That's fairly worth the travelling to ... 
 . . . But whereso'er the roadways tend, 
 Be sure there's nothing at the end." 
 
 A Dutchman, like all the other Dutchmen of 
 the extreme East, which is to say that he was 
 tall and stoutish, and pink and scrubbed very 
 clean, came up the stone steps of the verandah.
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 129 
 
 " Heer Garden ? " he said, removing his hat. 
 I recognised him as one of a firm upon whom I 
 had been calling. 
 
 " About that gum damar ? " he said. 
 
 And I became a man of business. 
 
 The Borneo boat was not due to leave till the 
 end of the week. I had still some few days' grace. 
 Half of every day I occupied in conscientious sight- 
 seeing, together with Cristina and Mrs. Ash. We 
 saw over the fort ; we went to the Spermunde 
 Archipelago ; we visited the Chinese and Malay 
 kampongs ; we drove to the waterfalls. I do 
 not think Mrs. Ash enjoyed herself at all ; I am 
 sure I did not, for Cristina seemed preoccupied, 
 and was clearly occupied in mind with matters 
 quite other than sight-seeing most of the time. 
 During the late hours of the afternoon, she was 
 never to be seen. I did not ask what she was 
 about, knowing that it concerned myself, and 
 that she would speak all in good time, but not a 
 moment sooner. 
 
 As for her chaperon, I had begun to develop 
 an odd sort of liking for the plucky old lady who 
 was earning her salary so hardly. I don't know 
 that it is in the story, but I choose to say that I 
 gave Mrs. Ash what Americans call " the time of 
 her life " one morning, when Cristina was occupied, 
 alone, and the old lady was marooned out on the 
 verandah with her North-Sea fishermen's knitting, 
 expressing in every line of her countenance an 

 
 130 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 ineradicable contempt for the " dirty blacks " 
 who surrounded her. The Rajah of Palontalo 
 was one he had stopped to have a liqueur 
 on the stoep ; some three -parts -naked coolies, 
 shifting luggage in the blinding sun outside, were 
 others, coming under the condemnation, whom it 
 was clear that Mrs. Ash did not differentiate in 
 any degree from His Highness. 
 
 " Come out with me, if you aren't busy," I said. 
 " I've been asked to call on a business friend, 
 and you might like to meet his wife. I hear she's 
 the smartest housekeeper in Macassar." 
 
 "Thank you, I should like it," said the old 
 lady briskly, pulling a pair of light-coloured kid 
 gloves out of her pocket. She was (of course) 
 already bonneted ; she put on the gloves as we 
 drove away down the avenues. I thought her a 
 little formal, but Dutch people like formality in 
 their callers. Mrs. Ash buttoned up the kids, which 
 were so pale as to look almost white, and regarded 
 them with satisfaction. I think she must have had 
 a pretty hand once ; it was still small and neat. 
 
 When we came back to the hotel, the old lady, 
 for the first time in my acquaintance with her, 
 was pink in the face, and almost excited. It was 
 close on twelve o'clock and very warm ; we saw 
 Cristina coming in as we drove up. 
 
 " I have had," said Mrs. Ash deliberately, as 
 we met on the stoep, " a most delightful time." 
 
 " I am so glad," said Cristina. " Been sight- 
 seeing ? "
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 131 
 
 " God forbid," said the old lady piously. " Mr; 
 Garden has been so good as to take me to call on 
 Mevrouw Van Noordwyck. And I have seen her 
 kitchen, and her bedroom, and her first spare 
 bedroom, and her second spare bedroom, and her 
 children's room, and her dining-room, and her 
 drawing-room, and her store-room, and both her 
 pantries, and the scullery. And " 
 
 She held out her ceremonial visiting gloves, 
 spotless as when we started. 
 
 "I tested things," she said. "Everything. I 
 trailed my gloves as I went ; I wiped them on things, 
 my dear girl. I touched the floor with them when 
 she wasn't looking. . . . Cristina, the Dutch are a 
 great nation, and deserve to have colonies nearly 
 as good as our own though I must admit I did 
 grudge them Java. ... I will never do so again." 
 
 She extended her gloved hands. 
 
 " Clean as new milk," she said. " They are a 
 great nation." 
 
 We walked in to lunch. 
 
 " Prikkadel," said Mrs. Ash, using a Malay 
 word for the first time, in her agitation. Usually 
 she scorned the heathen tongues that beat about 
 her unheeding ears, and calmly gave her orders 
 in English. 
 
 " She has a linen-room I didn't tell you about 
 that," said Mrs. Ash. " She couldn't use all the 
 linen in it. Not if she lived a hundred and fifty 
 years. I have more respect for the Dutch than 
 Water! Soda water, please."
 
 132 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 I translated. 
 
 " We had a very pleasant talk, while you were 
 with the husband," went on Mrs. Ash, galvanised 
 to surprising fluency. " She told me all about 
 the way they cheat you in the market or try 
 to. And how hard it is to find all the things you 
 want fresh for the rice-table. And about the 
 laundry-men. A most agreeable morning. She 
 has twenty-seven " 
 
 I do not know what she had twenty-seven of, 
 for Cristina at this moment had a slight coughing 
 fit, and some words were lost. 
 
 " No lace," said Mrs. Ash emphatically. " Cro- 
 chet and edgings. Most respectable. She tells me 
 that the wife of the Assistant Governor has " 
 
 Cristina was talking to me rather rudely, I 
 thought so I did not hear what the wife of the 
 Assistant Governor had. When I came to the 
 surface again, Mrs. Ash was just finishing a sen- 
 tence with 
 
 " Of course her position makes her a law unto 
 herself, but I may say that the really nice Dutch- 
 women do not approve of it. They think like 
 me that no matter how large your stock may be, 
 simplicity is necessary, to avoid confusion with 
 the " 
 
 There was another gap here. Cristina, oddly 
 enough, could not make the Malay waiter under- 
 stand her, and called me to help. When I had 
 straightened out the difficulty, Mrs. Ash was just 
 concluding
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 133 
 
 " As for me I call it simply demi-monde. And 
 Mevrouw Van Noordwyck is of my opinion. A most 
 agreeable morning. I forgot to mention that she 
 uses, personally, four sets of bed-linen a week, and 
 goes over all the wash and the market accounts. 
 There are not many like her in the world." 
 
 She contrived I do not know how to give 
 this last statement the air of something pious. It 
 was actually the last, for she shut up like an 
 umbrella, and talked no more that day or the 
 next. 
 
 But I owed to the morning's excursion a new 
 understanding with Mrs. Ash, which I told 
 myself was well worth the little trouble it had 
 cost. I knew Mevrouw Van Noordwyck, and I 
 had been certain that her house would prove a 
 paradise to the poor lady who had seen so many 
 " sights," and cared so little about any of them. 
 I had no other motive than a good-natured one. 
 Still it put Mrs. Ash on my side. 
 
 " What side ? " I asked the other Garden, 
 who had begun to talk. 
 
 " As if you didn't know," he jeered. 
 
 " I do not know," I said to myself, determinedly. 
 
 Somehow or other, the week went by, and it 
 was Saturday. 
 
 Our boat was to start late in the afternoon ; 
 she was due to arrive in Macassar about nine 
 o'clock in the morning, and would just have 
 time to land her cargo and proceed before dark. 
 It was the Duymaer Van Rumphius, I remember
 
 134 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 the very ship that I had watched away from the 
 jetty on the day when I saw the apparition. I 
 went down to the landing stage to see about 
 cabins, accompanied by Cristina and Mrs. Ash. 
 They had been unable to promise any particular 
 accommodation, at the office ; they told us we 
 should have to take what we could get when the 
 ship had discharged her passengers for Macassar. 
 It was a busy time of year. 
 
 Somehow the sight of the Duymaer Van 
 Rumphius, with her piled-up strata of white decks, 
 and the glittering range of plate-glass windows 
 looking forward from the first-class lounge, re- 
 called with unpleasant vividness the day when I 
 last had seen her. The old dread began to creep 
 back. Could a man safely call himself sane, when 
 he had seen the dead alive, and walking down 
 Macassar jetty, past the Duymaer Van Rumphius, 
 in full glare of a tropic moon ? And it was Mabel 
 I had seen : Mabel at seventeen, as she had left 
 me, in the year 1891 ; no chance resemblance, 
 no fancied likeness in some stranger girl, born of 
 the unsatisfied, old wish to see my young love 
 again. . . . 
 
 Had I wished to see her ? I did not know. I 
 supposed I must have. Of course ! I had always 
 wanted to see her again. 
 
 That was it. I must have been wishing very 
 much, and the wish projected itself 
 
 But in that case, what about the dress ? 
 
 " I give it up," I thought wearily, and turned
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 135 
 
 my attention to handing Mrs. Ash and Cristina 
 over the gangway of the ship. She was fast to 
 the jetty; her passengers were disembarking. 
 We interfered with them somewhat ; it was 
 necessary to draw aside from the gangway, once 
 on deck, and let the stream go by. Mrs. Ash 
 found a seat on one of the deck lounges. I stood 
 idly watching the passengers. I don't know where 
 Cristina went to, but presently she appeared at 
 my elbow, a trifle out of breath. And again, as 
 under the electric lights the other night, I thought 
 she looked pale. 
 
 I don't think that, in real life, people " get 
 warnings ' ' of what is going to happen ; although 
 I will allow that the "warning" is a stock pro- 
 perty in the world of books. If you remember, 
 you did not get warning of it yourself. You recall 
 what I mean. It came when things were all 
 right, and when you had every reason to suppose 
 they were going to remain so when you were 
 careless and happy coming home from a jolly 
 day at the races, perhaps, and "feeling good," 
 or taking a happy evening over an old pipe and a 
 new book. And the door opened, and they said 
 someone wanted to see you. . . . And after that, 
 nothing was ever the same. But there is no use 
 in saying you had a warning or a presentiment. 
 
 I had none at that moment. I only thought 
 that Cristina had been running about the boat 
 looking for cabins, and wondered at that, or any- 
 thing else, putting her out of breath. I had not
 
 136 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 travelled so much in her company without having 
 the difference between the lungs of four-and- 
 twenty and the lungs of nine-and-thirty, rubbed 
 home pretty hard. And here she was, just at 
 my elbow out of breath. 
 
 "Mr. Garden ! " she said, very low but that 
 might have been lack of strength to speak loud. 
 
 " Yes ? " I said, turning round. She was be- 
 side, a little behind ; she was dressed in one of 
 her usual modish white clouds with fluttering edges ; 
 she had a hat that hid three-quarters of her face. 
 
 " Mr. Garden ! remember I warned you. I 
 would like to warn you more definitely now, but 
 I can't. I can't help your knowing. You would 
 know." 
 
 "Know what? " I asked. 
 
 For answer, Cristina fairly pulled me round, face 
 towards the descending stream of passengers. 
 Then she shut both hands tightly round the ivory 
 handle of her parasol, and looked not at the 
 passengers, but at me. 
 
 I think she must have seen something strange, 
 for in that moment, past me within a couple of 
 yards came a slim girlish shape, helped through 
 the crowd by the arm of a strong, elderly man 
 with white hair and pointed beard. I did not 
 know who the man was : I had never seen him 
 before. But the girl was Mabel. 
 
 Mabel in modern dress, with her bright fair 
 hair parted and drawn back, a little higher than 
 I remembered it in eigh teen-ninety-one, but the
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 137 
 
 same hair, the same girl Mabel, chattering, 
 laughing, turning to speak to the man beside 
 her ; Mabel, with a basket of feather flowers that 
 she had bought from a Malay, and was trying to 
 shield from injury in the crowd ; Mabel, here in 
 Celebes, and alive. 
 
 I do not know what I thought. I believe I was 
 incapable of thinking, in that moment. I simply 
 stared. 
 
 Then I was conscious of Cristina's hand laid 
 on my arm, and Cristina's voice saying could it 
 be, with a choke in it ? 
 " Come away." 
 
 I came I don't know why. I was scarcely 
 capable of thinking or acting for myself, and was 
 conscious of nothing, very clearly, until I found 
 myself sitting by Cristina on a deck seat. The 
 seat was on the quiet side of the ship ; we could 
 see nothing but boats and blue water, and were 
 seen by no one. 
 
 " Do you want to know who that was ? " asked 
 Cristina. 
 
 "It was Mabel," I said. "But I " 
 
 "It was Mabel Mabel Molyneux." 
 " Molyneux ? " I said. " But her name wasn't 
 and she is Miss Raye, if you can't help me out 
 of this tangle, I shall certainly think the doctor 
 was right and you are wrong. I feel as much out 
 of my mind as any lunatic in Bedlam." 
 
 "I was wrong to try and break it," said the 
 Kris-Girl. " You shall have it straight. Your
 
 138 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Mabel did die, and was buried, in 1893. She 
 didn't die of cholera. She died when Mabel 
 Molyneux was born." 
 
 I tried to speak. 
 
 " Let me finish, it's best. Molyneux was her 
 uncle's secretary ; he travelled with them. He 
 fell in love with her at once. She remembered 
 you till they got to Singapore. Then don't 
 think hardly of her she was only a baby, poor 
 little soul, and Molyneux was accounted the most 
 attractive man in Singapore they called him 
 ' the Apollo of the East ' then, she forgot." 
 
 The Kris-Girl paused and clasped her small 
 hands what tiny hands they were ! more closely 
 yet about the ivory parasol-handle. 
 
 " And they wouldn't tell me she married 
 him ! " I exclaimed. " In God's name, why ? I 
 was no baby if she was." 
 
 " They could not tell you," said Cristina very 
 gently, " because Molyneux had a wife." 
 
 I was silent for quite a long time or, at least, 
 it seemed so ; perhaps it was no more than a 
 minute or two. Time loses all significance in 
 such moments. 
 
 There was no need to tell me the rest. I knew 
 it now the secret that had been hidden from me 
 for fifteen years ; not for my sake who cared 
 about me ? but because of Mabel's name. Mabel 
 the little, gentle soul who had fallen upon evil 
 days ; Mabel, who had not known how to resist 
 " the Apollo of the East." What a name, and
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 139 
 
 lat a man he must have been no doubt, a 
 Blatant, smirking 
 
 " It is a curious thing, but I met him once," 
 went on Cristina. " He was not what you might 
 have thought. He was a fine character, but a 
 man most unhappily married. I believe he and 
 Mabel were happy for a while. . . . They ran 
 away to some one of the islands. And he was 
 drowned it was a dreadful story and her 
 people took her back. No one knew about-^- 
 Mabel Molyneux. Molyneux's brother adopted 
 her, and she has been brought up by him and his 
 wife. The old lady went down with them, but 
 you would not have noticed her. They are 
 travelling about the Dutch islands, or rather, they 
 have been they go back to Singapore to-day." 
 
 "They are Singapore people?" I asked. I 
 still felt rather stunned ; it seemed strange to 
 me that I was not suffering more. 
 
 " Yes ... I know what you are going to ask. 
 I don't think the story was guessed at till lately 
 but Mabel Molyneux has grown up so like 
 her " 
 
 " But, good God ! " I said, " she can't be 
 seventeen it's only fifteen years and three- 
 quarters since " 
 
 " She is not sixteen. You must remember she 
 has been brought up in the East ; an Eastern 
 reared girl at sixteen is fully eighteen to look at." 
 
 I said nothing for some time. The shining, 
 salt-blue water of Macassar Harbour was before
 
 140 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 me, canoes plied up and down, the air was full 
 of the spice-and-salt-fish perfume of the Eastern 
 island world. But what I saw was England ; 
 grey water and black ships, and slapping waves ; 
 the dreary Southampton pier in a February rain- 
 storm ; young Jack Garden, who now was young 
 no more, holding a girl in his arms as the last bell 
 rang, and the calls of " Any more for the shore ? " 
 began sounding over the steamer Branksome Hall, 
 bound for far away. . . . 
 
 Black ship and gre}>- water faded ; the pale, 
 sweet vision of Mabel died. Again there was blue 
 sea and brazen sun before me ; the canoes were 
 paddling under the big white steamers ; the 
 Kris-Girl, warm and living and alive, sat beside 
 me, with sympathy and pity in her eyes. 
 
 I do not know why that pity should have irri- 
 tated me, but it undoubtedly did. Somehow, I 
 did not want to be sympathised with or did not 
 want her to provide the sympathy or 
 
 God knows what strange tangle of feelings 
 filled my heart. I felt that I must speak, and 
 break it through. 
 
 " Do you know where they are gone ? " I asked. 
 " I would like to see and speak to her." 
 
 Now it is a strange thing, after all the trouble 
 she had taken to bring us together, but it is true, 
 that Cristina's eyes looked momentary annoy- 
 ance. She wiped the expression out immediately, 
 but I had seen it. It did not displease me at all ; 
 I had not time to think why.
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 141 
 
 " They are staying at the ' Nassau,' " she said. 
 " You would like to call on them ? " 
 
 " I should," I said very decidedly. 
 
 " Then I can give you a letter of introduction. 
 I don't know Mr. and Mrs. Molyneux intimately, 
 but I once travelled to Hong-kong with them, 
 and we got on very well. You shall have the 
 letter at once." 
 
 She was only a minute or two writing it in the 
 saloon. I took it away with me. 
 
 " Xo need to say good-bye," I said. " We shall 
 meet again to-night." 
 
 Cristina looked at me a little oddly. 
 
 "Shall we?" she said. "Well, in any case 
 I'll shake hands." 
 
 It was a light, formal shake, and she was gone 
 almost as soon as my fingers released hers. I 
 followed her with my eyes for a moment. 
 
 " Nothing weak about the Kris-Girl," I thought, 
 as I passed down the gangway again. " And her 
 worst enemy could not call her " 
 
 I paused before the word I had in my mind. 
 There was something in my mood that shied away 
 from the term " Insipid." 
 
 I ought to have been excited and moved, driv- 
 ing to the "Nassau" with that letter in my 
 hand ; but, somehow, I was not. However, I 
 reflected that it would be an exceedingly pleasant 
 thing to see Mabel's daughter and second self, 
 and that I was most fortunate to have discovered 
 such an ending to my troubles. What troubles ?
 
 142 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Why, the trouble about the supposed apparition. 
 There could be no other with which Mabel Moly- 
 neux was connected . . . could there ? 
 
 " Her mother was a full year older," I thought, 
 irrelevantly. 
 
 I found that the party were not in their hotel. 
 This disappointed me. 
 
 " Annoying most annoying," I murmured. 
 
 " The Juffrouw she coming back, an' the Heer, 
 one minute," volunteered the mandoer, watching 
 me with glassy brown eyes. " Mynheer wait ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said, and found a seat under the stone 
 arcade. The mandoer shuffled away in his heel- 
 less slippers. It was not yet really hot ; a plea- 
 sant breeze blew down the great main road ; there 
 was a smell of something fresh and scented. I 
 smoked, and waited, with the letter in my hand. 
 I meant to wait till they had gone in, and then 
 send it with the mandoer. I had pencilled across 
 my own card " Sailing to-night," so that I might 
 be pardoned the unconventionally of calling with 
 my own letter of introduction. 
 
 Suddenly, a question struck me. Was I " sail- 
 ing to-night ? " 
 
 I saw what Cristina had meant. I understood 
 that I had got to decide, here and now, whether 
 I was ever to see her again, or not. I had to find 
 out whether the obvious course to love, follow, 
 and wait for Mabel's daughter, the girl who was 
 my lost love herself was to be my course ; or 
 whether the strange, wild wanderings about
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 143 
 
 Malaysia in the train of a girl who was for no 
 man's taking, were to continue until 
 
 That was just it. There was no " until." 
 Whereas, with this " simple maiden in her flower," 
 there would of course be a chance. Girls of 
 sixteen usually fancied men much older than 
 themselves. Fathers, uncles, and guardians gener- 
 ally favoured the suitor with the long purse. Was 
 I going to repeat my courtship of the year ninety- 
 one, here in nineteen-eight, to woo the gentle 
 ghost who seemed to have risen out of the grave 
 
 for my sake, or A tall, grey-haired man 
 
 with a pointed beard came into the courtyard. 
 A slim girl with fair hair, looking quite eighteen 
 years of age, followed him. 
 
 I have never been able to explain what I did. 
 Before the girl and her uncle were half way 
 to the stone cloister, I was out in the Hooge 
 Pad, hailing a karetta. The salt wind from the 
 sea blew upon my face, as I bowled away down 
 the road. Certainly the south-east was getting 
 up. The fragments of Cristina's letter of intro- 
 duction danced and spun in my wake like sportive 
 butterflies. 
 
 I went out of town, and did not return till the 
 Duymaer Van Rumphius was almost ready to cast 
 off. When she sidled away from beneath the 
 sizzling glare of the electrics, and began to tramp 
 her way out toward the sleeping Spermundes, I 
 went up on deck. Cristina was sitting near the 
 saloon companion-way, in a discreet evening dress.
 
 144 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 It was not pink this time ; I think the colour 
 was black and very pale green. 
 
 "Good evening," I said. I thought there was 
 the least possible flash of her blue eyes, but the 
 lashes were so long. . . . 
 
 "I am not the least surprised," she said com- 
 posedly. 
 
 " You never are. I am quite certain that you 
 knew what I was going to do much better than 
 I did myself." 
 
 "I wonder ! ... Is the ghost laid ? " 
 
 " The ghost is laid. It will never walk again." 
 
 " I wonder," said Cristina again. 
 
 Dinner was not quite over ; there was no one 
 on deck. 
 
 " I will show you," I said. I took out of my 
 pocket a little box of sandalwood and silver, and 
 laid it in her hands. 
 
 " What am I to do with it ? " she asked. 
 
 "Bury it," I said. "Poor little box poor 
 little girl ! Let it rest. . . . She's resting this 
 long time. They both wandered long and far 
 enough." 
 
 Cristina Raye rose, and let the little casket 
 slip very softly from her fingers into the sea. 
 
 We sat for a while without talking after that. 
 
 "I wonder," I said presently, "if you would 
 mind telling me how you found it all out." 
 
 " It won't hurt you ? " asked Cristina, gently. 
 
 "No. Dreams and ghosts can't hurt when 
 you know what they are."
 
 THE GHOST OF MACASSAR 145 
 
 "Well," she said slowly, "it was, I think, the 
 hat." 
 
 " What hat ? " 
 
 " Hers. Of course, I did not think you mad, 
 but I could not understand, until you told me that 
 she was wearing a peach-basket hat." 
 
 "I never did!" 
 
 " Oh yes, you did ; you told me that her head 
 looked like other people's and everyone is wear- 
 ing peach-basket hats this year and last. Well, 
 after that I just knew it must be someone alive. 
 Now, of course, people don't as a rule go wander- 
 ing about the quay at least, women don't unless 
 they are arriving by a ship, or going away in one. 
 You may leave out seeing friends off, in the case 
 of an English visitor, as there are never six English 
 staying in the town together. Well, I went to 
 the steamship office, and looked up passenger 
 lists for some time past it wasn't easy to get 
 at them, but I managed " 
 
 "I know," I said. "I saw you managing." 
 
 Cristina did not giggle, but she twinkled just 
 a tiny bit. 
 
 " Well, I found the list of the passengers by 
 the Duymaer Van Rumphius, from the day when 
 you saw your vision. She was going to Booton 
 and other islands; and 'Mr., Mrs., and Miss 
 Molyneux, Singapore,' were among the Booton 
 passengers." 
 
 Cristina stopped a moment, and looked out 
 across the plain of night-black sea. We had 
 10
 
 146 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 turned out of the harbour by now ; the land and 
 its lights lay behind, the steamer was fast 
 gathering way on the road to unseen Borneo. 
 
 " I can't explain the way one thinks things 
 out," she said. " It seems rather as if they 
 thought themselves out if one may put it so 
 clumsily. There are a lot of detached facts, and 
 you feel they are related to each other somehow, 
 but you can't for the life of you tell how, and no 
 amount of thinking would make it clear. So 
 you don't think. You wait, and just leave the 
 doors open. And by-and-by, if you turn your 
 back and pretend there's no door there, some- 
 thing comes in through it." 
 
 "What? " 
 
 " I wish I knew. A sort of brownie. I sup- 
 pose you remember about Scotch brownies, and 
 how they clean and tidy up all the house with- 
 out a sound when everyone's asleep. Well, it 
 tidies up. And when you look round, it's gone 
 but there are your detached facts, all set in 
 order and laid out in a row ; and you say 
 ' W T hy, of course ! ' and that's all there is to 
 it." 
 
 " And in this case ? " 
 
 " It sorted up Singapore, and the vision, and 
 the Duymaer Van Rumphius, and and Mabel's 
 letters, and the other things." 
 
 I don't know how I knew, but I did under- 
 stand, very clearly, that she was thinking of that 
 grave in Singapore, with its strange, brief inscrip-
 
 
 147 
 
 tion, and that she did not care to bring it into the 
 tale. 
 
 "And they all laid themselves out in a row, 
 one, two, three, four. . . . And it was clear so 
 clear that I was frightened. But I knew that 
 you would see her again, when the Duymaer Van 
 Rumphius returned because no one stays long at 
 Booton : when you've seen the pearling, there's 
 nothing else. And that's all." 
 
 " All that you can tell," I said. "You have 
 a power that other people have not, and you 
 don't tell me anything about that, because you 
 don't know." 
 
 " Have I a power that other people haven't ? " 
 she asked, dreamily. " I sometimes wonder if I 
 have or if it has me ? " 
 
 We were silent then ; the black sea, sparked 
 with foam, went hissing down the flanks of the 
 ship ; the lights of Macassar were dying out 
 behind. Something, I knew, was dying with 
 them ; a part of my old life sank, as they sank, 
 beneath the sea. It struggled in its death ; the 
 old dream, the old regret, died hard, now that the 
 end had come. For the thing that was dying 
 was not my late, calm, temperate sorrow that 
 was scarcely a sorrow at all, but the bitter grief of 
 the days when I had been young, and mourned, 
 with all my young simple heart, the girl who had 
 played me as false as woman could play man. 
 It seemed to be myself that I had lost, not 
 Mabel.
 
 148 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Out of the dark drifted a line, half -forgot ten, 
 from a poem I had not seen in many years 
 
 "I am shamed through all my being to have loved so 
 slight a thing. " 
 
 What man would love Mabel Molyneux, that 
 early-blooming flower of the East ? what history 
 would she make for him ? 
 
 " Like mother, like daughter," I thought. 
 " The man who loves her will take a risk. . . . 
 Thank God, the man will never be I." 
 
 And the lights of Macassar sank beneath the 
 sea.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 
 
 VERY slowly the ship glided through the water, 
 coming up to the quay. The land we were 
 approaching was not like any land that I had 
 ever seen ; the sea was unlike every other sea. 
 You saw no blue sparkle ; it did not look alive. 
 It had the colours of decay, corpse-yellow and 
 livid green, and it shone with a slimy, sickening 
 glitter. There was some small breeze that after- 
 noon, but the water did not seem to notice it ; it 
 only heaved in an unwholesome kind of way. 
 
 " Why, it's oiled ! " said Cristina, leaning over 
 the rail. 
 
 " What did you expect, of the biggest oil town 
 of the East ? " I asked. 
 
 " Nothing half so decayed and wicked-looking. 
 I think this is the sort of place where people ought 
 not to live. If I were a native, I should say it 
 was full of devils. There's something devilish- 
 looking even in those trees." 
 
 There was ; they seemed to have a personality 
 of their own something witch-like and wicked. 
 
 149
 
 150 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Out of a lower sea of poisonous green bush, they 
 rose incredibty high, lifting stark trunks against 
 a sky that was like the iron lid of a cauldron, and 
 flinging out a branch or two at the top dark 
 hands extended in menace, not in welcome. 
 Beyond the curve of the bay, where the houses 
 and the road had been made, came rank green 
 mangrove swamp ; more trees ; more brooding, 
 iron sky. 
 
 "Why does it all look wicked?" mused 
 Cristina. '' One has seen big, solitary trees 
 before, and mangroves, and swamps, still ..." 
 
 "Too much lunch," said Mrs. Ash briskly. 
 " Anything would look wicked after that. r Lunch. 
 Heat. And liver. That's all." ^ 
 
 "Not when you don't eat lunch," said Cris- 
 tina. " I never do. It's quite enough for me to 
 watch the Dutch eating. I feel absolutely stodged 
 after that." 
 
 The conversation languished. We were gliding 
 in and into the oil town, and as we went, the heat 
 of the land came out upon us, as if the door of 
 some invisible furnace were being slowly swung 
 on its hinges. It was the unbearable hour of 
 three o'clock. All over the deck fat Dutchmen 
 in pyjamas, and fatter Dutch ladies in their 
 amazing costume of sarong and combing- jacket, 
 lay spilled out on chairs, unstockinged legs can- 
 didly extended. They were nearly all asleep ; it 
 did not appear that the thirty courses of the 
 " rice-table " had inspired them with any interest,
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 151 
 
 gloomy or otherwise, in the approach to Balik 
 Papan. 
 
 We were all going to the oil town together. I 
 had business with the Dutch company that runs 
 the oil-field, and Cristina had a fancy to take a 
 flying look at Borneo. From what we could see, 
 up on the deck of the steamer, it seemed as though 
 the flying look ought to be enough to content any- 
 one. 
 
 Balik Papan is a town of some twelve thousand 
 natives and three hundred whites, on a site that 
 is simply one bite taken out of the jungle. The 
 offices and workshops of the company are strung 
 along a black cinder road, oiled with kerosene, 
 that for roasting, blinding heat, is like the high- 
 way to Hell. Warehouses rise on piles in slimy 
 marshes. Factories stand at the far end. The 
 unbroken forest rises up in a wall behind. Behind 
 that, and not so very far away, are unexplored 
 swamps and jungles, ourang-outangs, wild ele- 
 phants, and head-hunting Dyaks. 
 
 " What are all those gas containers for ? " 
 asked Cristina, as we began tying up alongside, 
 and brightly dressed coolies came running to 
 adjust the long pipe that was to give the Van 
 Diemen her drink of oil. 
 
 " To contain oil." 
 
 /" Petroleum ? all those dozens and scores of 
 tbmgs, as big as churches ? " 
 
 " Yes. Balik Papan has a big output, though 
 the field isn't here, it's sixty miles away."
 
 152 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " What happens if they take fire ? " 
 
 " They don't. And the villas are at the other 
 side of the hill." 
 
 "If it did whoof ! " said a ship's officer, 
 spreading out his hands expressively. " The sea 
 itself will be on fire, if that should occur, and as 
 to escape, they would have only the jungle." 
 
 " Where the head-hunters are ? " 
 
 " We do not encourage the head-hunters. 
 There are some, but not many, oh no ! " 
 
 " One apiece ought to be enough," mused 
 Cristina. " Don't throw away matches, Mr. 
 Garden, while we're here." 
 
 " If he shall smoke, we will perhaps put him in 
 gaol," observed the Dutchman, calmly. " When 
 you go on shore, you may see the notices." 
 
 We did. Cristina insisted on going for a walk 
 in the worst heat of the afternoon, and the devoted 
 Mrs. Ash accompanied her. I went too, and as 
 the officer had foretold, I saw notices couched in 
 Dutch, English, German, Chinese, Javanese, and 
 Hindustani, threatening with I do not know what 
 penalties, anyone who dared t6 smoke. Looking 
 upon those serried lines of oil-containers, each as 
 large as the gasworks' receivers that most people 
 know ; seeing the colossal oil-refineries at the 
 end of the town ; noting the pipes that snaked 
 here and there and everywhere, carrying kerosene, 
 one understood that the notices about smoking, 
 and the other notices about fire apparatus, and 
 the obvious provision for dealing everywhere and
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 153 
 
 immediately with the smallest outbreak of fire, 
 were by no means unnecessary. 
 
 " How do you like it ? " Cristina asked her 
 companion, as we struggled along the fiery road, 
 drawn in under our sun umbrellas like so many 
 tortoises under their shells. 
 
 Mrs. Ash, thin, black, and rigid as ever, re- 
 marked, with a comprehensive glance : 
 
 " One could save several shillings a week on 
 kerosene, I'll be bound. They would never have 
 the face to charge retail prices, with all that 
 running about." She relapsed into a dream, and 
 I could guess that she was reckoning up the price 
 of petroleum in Kensington. 
 
 I recommended them both to go back to the 
 ship as soon as they could, and went off about 
 my business among the great piles of office build- 
 ings. Later in the day, we met on the windy 
 side of the promenade deck. The sun was begin- 
 ning to set ; a little coolness not much was 
 creeping into the hot-lead atmosphere ; the slimy 
 sea stirred faintly. 
 
 " Had enough of Balik Papan ? " I asked light- 
 ing the cigar for which I had been longing all day. 
 
 In answer, Cristina said 
 
 " What are the people here afraid of ? " 
 
 " Afraid of ? " I parried, for I had some idea 
 of what she meant. 
 
 " Yes. They're afraid of something. Mrs. Ash 
 and I were asked to go and see some people in 
 their house, and we went and we noticed it there.
 
 154 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 And \ve noticed it in stores. And some of those 
 Javanese coolies they seemed jumpy if you 
 spoke to them, and they kept looking out over 
 their shoulders. And do you know ? every berth 
 on the ship is engaged, for wives and daughters 
 of officials." 
 
 I suppressed a whistle. I had noticed some- 
 thing odd about the people I had been to see 
 that afternoon ; a certain suggestion of anxiety 
 and strain. . . . But no one had made any con- 
 fidences to me. And this was the first I had 
 heard of the booking up of the ship. 
 
 " We don't sail till the day after to-morrow ; 
 there is lots of cargo," went on Cristina. I saw 
 that her eyes were very bright, and I noticed 
 now that she was wearing something very pretty 
 and smart. 
 
 " Been thinking again, Kris-Girl ? " I asked. 
 
 "Wouldn't you?" she flashed. "And I'll 
 tell you something. It isn't Dyaks. And it isn't 
 coolies rising the coolies are frightened, too. 
 I'm going to know all about it as soon as I can 
 get hold of a woman. But the trouble is, most 
 of the women don't talk English or French. I've 
 tried the men, but they pretend not to know 
 what I mean. So it's the women or nothing. 
 And I don't think it will be nothing." 
 
 The sun set low and red beneath a bar of black. 
 The astonishing electric lights of Balik Papan 
 came out like large white stars. In their thin 
 radiance, the looming reservoirs showed tall and
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 155 
 
 grey and very, very many. The steamer, with a 
 snaky oil-pipe set to some hidden mouth, drank 
 on and on. Cristina and I were silent. Before 
 long, she nodded good-night, and left. 
 
 As for me, I sat thinking until far into the 
 night, and ray thoughts were not of the mystery 
 that seemed to lurk about this odd, dangerous 
 town ; not yet were they concerned with prices 
 of oil fuel to be supplied on the spot to certain 
 cargo vessels. These vessels were named after 
 myself, my sister, my country-house, the county 
 we live in, and the river that supplies water to 
 our largest works. They had been to me very 
 much what children are to other men . . . still, 
 my thoughts were not concerned with them, nor 
 with their conversion to oil fuel, that night. I 
 was thinking more about a large gold Chinese ring, 
 marquise shaped, belting a small finger with a 
 rosy, shining nail. I was thinking that I would 
 like to take off that ring and throw it into Balik 
 Papan's scummy, slimy sea. Other thoughts 
 came ; the dominant note in them all was 
 " She is flying from herself . ..." Why? Why? 
 Was there some man she should not love ? Was 
 the memory of her dead fiance no, it was not 
 that, or not only that. My upper, reasonable 
 self declared it must be ; the subliminal Jack 
 Garden obstinately maintained it was not. 
 
 "A man would drink," ran my disconnected 
 thoughts. " She intoxicates herself with these 
 intellectual feats. Once the mood is on her, she
 
 156 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 can think of nothing else. She is glad of that. 
 . . . She was glad to-night that there was some- 
 thing here for her to cut into with that sharp 
 mind of hers. It's like chopping down trees to 
 make yourself forget the toothache." 
 
 "Well! " I finished, strolling round the deck. 
 " I have no right to pry. No right," I repeated. 
 "No right." The thought struck coldly. 
 
 I threw the end of my cigar on to the jetty, 
 and then stopped short, and cursed myself for a 
 careless fool. The ship might still be drinking, 
 for all I knew and anyhow, the place was full of 
 oil pipes, probably leaky. . . . 
 
 What a howl ! 
 
 The officer in charge of the steamer came over 
 to the landward side of the deck, above my head 
 and looked out. I looked, too, and I saw, of all 
 things on earth, an excited Chinaman some sort 
 of watchman, I supposed flinging himself on my 
 cigar-end, and hastily spitting upon it to put it 
 out. He could not have seen me clearly in the 
 shadow of the hurricane deck, but he looked up 
 and shouted Chinese abuse at me, flapping his 
 hands like a turtle in a temper, and pointing 
 indignantly to the forest of reservoirs behind. 
 
 Now I had never, to my knowledge, seen an 
 excited Chinese before, and it struck me that I 
 might be in for trouble. The officer was already 
 making his way to the companion. My deck- 
 shoes, were rubber-soled and silent ; I slipped 
 into my cabin as quietly as a cat, snapped off the
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 157 
 
 light, dropped coat and shoes on the floor, and 
 fell into my berth. When someone turned a 
 bull's-eye lantern on to me a few moments later, 
 I was lying sound asleep so far as anyone could 
 tell. 
 
 Next morning, on the deck, very early, I met 
 the Kris-Girl. 
 
 " How goes the mystery ? " I asked. 
 
 " No time to find out yet," she said, rather 
 curtly. " I mean to, though, if I stop here after 
 the boat goes." She had found a chessboard full 
 of pieces, left out on deck, and was doing the most 
 amazing things with pawns and kings and castles 
 while she spoke juggling them through the air 
 from one hand to another, in a flying stream ; 
 making them stop short and cross ; sending them 
 up in spirals. The curious thing was that she 
 did it absentmindedly, and gave all her attention, 
 apparently, to what she was saying. 
 
 " Did you hear that Chinaman howl last 
 night ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes," I said. I told her what had happened. 
 
 The stream of bishops and knights suddenly 
 wavered ; a queen dived toward the deck, and 
 was deftly caught. Then the pieces began to fly 
 up in a corkscrew curve, gaily. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Garden of Eden," she said, " weren't 
 you clever enough to see ? " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 The chessmen executed a final flight, and came 
 back to Cristina's hand like homing pigeons.
 
 158 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 She set them all neatty back on the board before 
 she answered. 
 
 " That's what it is they are afraid of." 
 
 "What? Chinamen?" 
 
 " Xot Chinamen. Fire." 
 
 " Why, they're always afraid of fire here ; look 
 at the precautions." 
 
 " Yes, but now they're frightened of it. When 
 a Chinaman goes on as you describe, it doesn't 
 mean ordinary routine precautions." 
 
 "No," I agreed. " I see what you mean." 
 
 " There is some special reason for fearing it just 
 now," she went on, " and it's evidently a reason 
 over which they have no control. Shipping off the 
 women and children as they are doing " 
 
 " Are they all going ? " 
 
 " Oh, no. Only twenty or thirty of them. 
 But that's enough to show that someone is seri- 
 ously alarmed." 
 
 " Well, the Dutch officer didn't know anything 
 about it when we came in, to judge by the way 
 he talked." 
 
 " He will now?" said Cristina. " Try him." 
 
 I looked up the plump, white-and-gold clad 
 young man to whom we had been talking when 
 the ship came in, and asked him, by and by, what 
 he thought of the chances of fire in the town. 
 There was no light reply this time. He changed 
 the subject brusquely, and told me something or 
 other I did not want to hear, about the natural 
 history of crocodiles.
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 159 
 
 I came back to Cristina. 
 
 "You're right," I said. "He knows. And 
 like a true Dutchman, he won't have foreigners 
 poking their noses into his affairs. I don't think 
 you will make much by inquiries, in Balik Papan." 
 
 " Shan't I ? " she asked, her little pointed face 
 looking up elfishly under its halo of dark, soft 
 hair. " Would you like to come and see ? " 
 
 " I should," I answered, promptly. 
 
 Never as long as I live am I likely to forget the 
 heat of that afternoon's walk. Again, at the un- 
 holy hour of three, did that sprite of a girl insist 
 on setting forth, accompanied by myself and the 
 tireless Mrs. Ash. 
 
 " I'm sorry," she explained, coolly (there was 
 nothing else cool upon the length and breadth of 
 Borneo that afternoon), " but it's an excellent 
 rule to go out at the siesta hour when you want 
 to know things. You see, no one's expected to 
 go out then ; that's why." 
 
 We paced along on the petroleum-caked road- 
 way, under the lee of a huge rock wall that flung 
 heat at us instead of shade. Behind us the many- 
 coloured crowd of Indian, Javanese, and Chinese 
 coolies, went languidly about their work ; leather- 
 skinned buffaloes with enormous horns dragged 
 heavy carts ; native women wearing pink and 
 yellow saris on their heads went by with a tinkle 
 of anklets. The coloured man and woman do 
 not rest in the fierce hours of mid-day heat, but 
 the white, in Dutch Malaysia, is invisible from
 
 160 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 one o'clock till four or five. We walked on and 
 on ; a small breeze from the sea came up as we 
 left the town. Bungalows, built on piles, began 
 to show in front of us. We were coming to the 
 residential quarter. 
 
 It was like a city of the dead, when we reached 
 it. Behind shut jalousies, on enormous Dutch 
 beds veiled with tents of mosquito netting, the 
 inhabitants were dozing, three-quarters undressed, 
 waiting for the cool of five o'clock. For all we 
 could see of them, they might have been in 
 Amsterdam. Dusty -looking dogs slept in shaded 
 spots ; beneath verandahs you could see the 
 coiled-up bodies of Javanese house-boys. The 
 sun struck wickedly down from the sky, and up 
 from the road ; a giant cricket, the only thing 
 awake in this enchanted city, sat up in a mango 
 tree and made a fiendish whizzing, boring noise, 
 that seemed to go round and round like a centre- 
 bit working through a door. 
 
 We stopped ; it seemed that Cristina, for once, 
 was undecided. The sea broke hotly on the 
 burning sand ; the maddening cricket kept up its 
 ceaseless zizz-zizz, zizz-zizz. 
 
 We stood at the beginning of the little suburb, 
 looking about us. Mrs. Ash broke the silence 
 abruptly. 
 
 " Ordinary nigger-looking natives I don't mind," 
 she said. " You needn't consider them human. 
 But good-looking natives haven't any business to 
 exist."
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 161 
 
 " But why, dear Ashie ? " asked Cristina. 
 
 " I find them offensive," said Mrs. Ash, ex- 
 planatorily. 
 
 " Have you seen any lately ? " I asked, more 
 for the sake of making conversation than any- 
 thing else. 
 
 In reply, the lady stretched out a thin, black- 
 silk-covered finger. 
 
 " I dislike niggers in general, and on principle," 
 she said. " But I dislike that particularly." 
 
 " That," which had just come out, soft-footed, 
 from behind a great concrete bungalow, was a 
 Dyak a young Dyak ; a chief ; a very hand- 
 some chief. The Dyaks will not work for the 
 Dutch, and very few of them are to be seen about 
 Balik Papan, where they have, strictly speaking, 
 no business. This man had a slightly furtive 
 look about him, in spite of his admirable swagger. 
 There was no Chinese slyness about him, no 
 Indian subservience, no Javanese meekness ; he 
 
 " Trod the earth like a buck in spring, 
 And he stood like a lance in rest ; " 
 
 yet all the same he contrived to look as if he were 
 up to something I can find no other phrase. 
 He was of a reddish-copper colour, with straight 
 black hair half hidden under a crimson-and-gold 
 turban ; he wore nothing but a loin-cloth, but 
 it was of fine yellow silk, and I could not be certain 
 that the usual brass rings on arms and legs were 
 not, in his case, gold. More than one dagger, 
 richly hilted, was stuck in his waist-cloth, 
 11
 
 162 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " He really is handsome," said Cristina, look- 
 ing at him narrowly. The young Dyak returned 
 her glance, with more freedom than I liked. 
 There was nothing savage about him except his 
 eyes ; there the wild man leapt out. They were 
 large eyes, black and fiery as a bull's, and deep- 
 set, under brows that frowned a little. It seemed 
 to me that he was not altogether pleased at our 
 presence ; he muttered something, half to him- 
 self. Cristina, to my surprise, answered him. 
 
 " Do you know Dyak ? " I asked. 
 
 " No. That was Dutch." 
 
 " I didn't catch it. What business had a Dyak 
 knowing Dutch ? " 
 
 "A good deal less than one, according to the 
 authorities. They don't allow natives to learn it." 
 
 " What did the impertinent brute say ? " 
 
 " Oh, he wasn't impertinent. He only said 
 that the sun was too strong for white ladies to be 
 out." 
 
 " Confounded cheek," I muttered. Cristina, 
 somehow or other, was managing to lead me 
 away. I think she had her arm in mine ; I was 
 not quite sure, because when I became fully alive 
 to the fact, I found it was not there any longer. 
 By this time we were on the highway to Balik 
 Papan again, retracing our steps. I will allow 
 that I was extremely angry, and was scarcely 
 conscious of where I was. 
 
 " Mr. Garden," said Cristina, earnestly, " I 
 know exactly what you are thinking, but you
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 163 
 
 really must not. The man did nothing actually 
 rude, and he is fully armed, whereas you have 
 only a sun umbrella. And Mrs. Ash and I don't 
 want a row." 
 
 " As you wish," I said. The whole affair had 
 made me angry and sulky ; I did not speak again. 
 It seemed intolerable that any man, black, white, 
 or red, should dare to look with admiration at 
 the Kris-Girl. 
 
 We had gone some little way when Cristina, 
 who seemed in very good spirits, stopped, and 
 asked me for the loan of my field-glass. I unslung 
 it and gave it to her. She slipped behind a rock, 
 and looked long and steadily through the lenses. 
 Presently she came back to us, and returned the 
 glass. Her face was pink. 
 
 " Do you know what I saw ? " she said, address- 
 ing Mrs. Ash, who did not seem especially in- 
 terested. " I saw him go beneath the verandah, 
 put up his hand, and catch a bunch of flowers that 
 somebody threw down." 
 
 " What flowers ? " demanded Mrs. Ash, yawn- 
 ing wearily behind her black silk glove. 
 
 " Big j r ellow alamanda. He's putting them in 
 his hair. They've got some funny customs, these 
 natives. They can't read, but they make appoint- 
 ments with each other, sometimes, by means of 
 flowers." 
 
 " Like the lover when Maud sent him a rose to 
 say she'd meet him among the roses ? " I asked. 
 
 " Something of the kind. These resemblances
 
 164 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 are really very interesting, from an ethno-what- 
 is-it point of view. I could be quite scientific, if 
 it were all about things of that kind. Do you 
 know, in the betrothal customs of the " 
 
 " I want my tea," said Mrs. Ash. 
 
 " You shall have it. Pigi ! " ordered Cristina 
 and we pigi'd straightway. 
 
 We did not talk much on the way back to the 
 ship, but just as we reached the gangway, Cristina 
 turned to me and remarked, incomprehensibly 
 
 " Do you know, I believe THAT was connected 
 with IT." 
 
 Then she went to her cabin. After dark, 
 about seven the visiting hour of Dutch Malaysia 
 I saw her setting out with Mrs. Ash to make 
 a call of some kind. By the beauty and delicacy 
 of the dress she wore, I guessed that she was (as 
 Americans say) "feeling good," and that some 
 further development of her enterprise was on 
 hand. 
 
 I did not expect to see her again that night, 
 but we met half-an-hour later. A man with 
 whom I had been doing some business during 
 the day, asked me to visit his wife and family, 
 and it turned out that this was the family to 
 whom Cristina and Mrs. Ash also had introduc- 
 tions. We found the fat mother, fat daughter, 
 and three fat younger children, all on the concrete 
 verandah, all dressed and laced and bow'ed and 
 ribboned, as if they had never seen such a thing 
 as a sarong or a bath slipper in their lives. Coffee
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 165 
 
 was being handed round, and, so far as my small 
 knowledge of Dutch permitted me to judge, the 
 gossip of Balik Papan was being eagerly retailed, 
 in gross and in detail. 
 
 The master of the house said something, on 
 presenting me, that changed the conversation to 
 English. I don't know that I should have troubled 
 to listen to it, had I not seen that the Kris-Girl 
 was giving it more attention than it seemed to 
 deserve. This made me fix my attention, though 
 the result did not seem valuable 
 
 ..." No, we get on very well here the one 
 with the other ; we are not a quarrelsome what 
 is the word ? commonwealth no, community. 
 It is true, there is not much to do, and we talk 
 about one another, but we are very good friends 
 on a whole. A great many of the town have 
 ceased to call on Mevrouw " (I did not catch the 
 name), " because of that dreadful scandal ; it is 
 true she is half-caste, but in Holland we count 
 half-caste as white, and we do not like to see a 
 white woman to encourage a native admiring her." 
 " That is her house near the beginning of the 
 villas, with all the yellow flowers on it, is it not ? " 
 asked Cristina. 
 
 " Yes, they are beautiful, are they not ? " 
 " Do they grow anywhere else about the town ? " 
 " I think not that flower," said the Dutch- 
 woman thoughtfully. " It grows all over their 
 verandah, the back and the front. Would you 
 like to have a cutting procured for you ? "
 
 166 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 "Thank you, I'm afraid I could not use it. 
 But tell me about this half-caste lady have I 
 seen her, I wonder ? " 
 
 " Oh, no," the Dutchwoman said eagerly, fan- 
 ning herself with a large Japanese fan, and leaning 
 forward to speak with more emphasis. " Why, 
 her husband has shut her up ! So angry he is 
 for he is old, and she is young, and he will not 
 have her look at someone else than him, even if 
 it was a white that he has had the gateway of 
 the upper staircase locked, and himself keeps the 
 key. As soon as the boat goes, I think he will 
 take her down to it himself, and they will go 
 away to Holland. It is time for his leave, you 
 see. She will not be glad to go, for she was born 
 in Batavia, and she does not like to think of the 
 cold and the dark of Europe, but he will make 
 her go, for he is very angry. But, my dear lady, 
 what does one expect ? so old a man should not 
 have married a pretty young girl. When I was 
 
 married to my husband " She went off into 
 
 a long chapter of autobiography. 
 
 One or two men came in, and the conversation 
 became general. Mrs. Ash did not join in any of 
 it ; thin and black and upright, she sat in a 
 corner of the verandah, and surveyed the scene 
 with that unchangeable disapproval of "foreigners" 
 which I had come to recognise as her most notable 
 trait. I think she enjoyed herself, in an odd, 
 upside-down way of her own. I talked to my 
 host, and watched Cristina in the intervals. The
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 167 
 
 rocking-chairs clicked and swung ; the filled and 
 refilled coffee-cups tinkled as the Javanese boys 
 carried them about. Outside the lighted verandah 
 was the hot darkness of equatorial Borneo, 
 warm sea breaking on warm alligator-haunted 
 sand, great flying-foxes winging by among the 
 stars. A few spectral flowers showed dimly in the 
 stone vases about the enclosure. Either from 
 the flowers, or from the near-by jungle, came 
 every now and then a breath of perfume that was 
 wickedly, cloyingly sweet. 
 
 A huge young Dutchman, packed into a rock- 
 ing-chair that seemed a very tight fit, was talking 
 to Cristina. 
 
 " I have heard your name, Miss Raye," he 
 said. " Are you making some stay in Borneo ? 
 No ? Going on with the boat ? That is good. 
 I think you won't like Borneo, if you stayed. And 
 we don't want visitors much in Balik Papan ; we 
 have no place to put them, and nothing for them 
 to see." 
 
 " Oh, I think the town is interesting enough," 
 said Cristina, with a small fine smile. 
 
 The Dutchman's mind, apparently, did not 
 match his slow and bulky body, for he seemed to 
 read her unspoken meaning clearly enough. 
 
 " We don't want people to find us interesting," 
 he said bluntly. " I have heard that you have 
 done some clever things in other parts of Dutch 
 India. You should rest satisfied with that. We 
 don't want any krises here."
 
 168 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Cristina did not seem to hear him ; she played 
 with her fan, and stifled a little yawn, in a dainty 
 but wearied fashion. Her head dropped back 
 against her chair ; you could see boredom and 
 fatigue in every line of her figure, struggling with 
 a politeness that still kept the attention nominally 
 at work. ... I, who knew very well she was not 
 bored at all, could scarcely keep back a laugh at 
 the little witch's power of acting. 
 
 " I am so sorry," she said, apparently recover- 
 ing herself with an effort, " but there is something 
 in the Dutch accent that always seems to make 
 me sleepy. I am afraid I didn't catch would 
 you mind saying it again ? " 
 
 The young giant, his mind suddenly turned to 
 the fact that a pretty girl found him boresome 
 and tedious, was incapable for the moment of 
 catching his broken train of thought. He muttered 
 something scarcely audible, and in the pause that 
 followed, Cristina contrived to slip away. 
 
 She was scarcely out of the enclosure before I 
 caught her up. 
 
 " Miss Raye," I said. " I know what you're 
 going to do to-night as well as if you had told 
 me, and I don't mean to let you do it." 
 
 If it had been moonlight instead of starlight 
 but I could almost swear her breast did heave 
 a little faster, under its silks and laces. 
 
 Still, her voice was steady as she answered 
 
 " You seem to know a great deal. What am I 
 going to do ? "
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 169 
 
 " You're going to take that beastly Indian 
 dress of yours and go wandering about this dan- 
 gerous place, God knows where. You shan't 
 do it." 
 
 " You are both unexpected and unreasonable, 
 my dear guardian, is it, or uncle, or what rela- 
 tion ? I'm afraid I must have forgotten. What 
 relation are you really to me ? " 
 
 " Now you're satirical, which I suppose means 
 that you are angry," I said, rather miserably, 
 " but I don't mean to mind what you say ; you 
 are not to go. You know I can stop you like a 
 shot, by giving a hint to any of the authorities, 
 but I hope you won't drive me into that." 
 
 " Well," said Cristina, suddenly giving in in 
 the most amazing way, and turning to face me 
 like some small bird at bay, " if you go and spoil 
 all my plans, how do you propose to pay for it ! " 
 
 " Anyway you like to ask." 
 
 " Then you shall pay for it," she said, crushing 
 the French heel of her shoe into the gravel, as we 
 stood. " You shall go and do what I want, for me." 
 
 " Certainly I will," I said, hardly able to believe 
 that she had given in so readily, and feeling 
 curiously elated at the fact. " You can com- 
 mand as you like." 
 
 " You will probably do something stupid," 
 said the Kris-Girl, " but still, it might possibly 
 be better to have a man. . . . Dyaks are about 
 the worst kind of savage they've got in Malaysia," 
 
 She seemed to be thinking.
 
 170 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " I can run you couldn't believe how fast," 
 she said. " I always won the school races. But 
 a Dyak could run faster I suppose." 
 
 She looked behind her through the hot, heavy- 
 scented dusk. Mrs. Ash was out of sight ; we 
 had just entered on a level bit of pathway, with 
 a turn in it. 
 
 " What do you think ? " she said. She lifted 
 her skirt over her neat silk ankles, held it with 
 one hand, and suddenly darted off in a run as 
 swift and easy as the flight of a bird. Like a 
 bird, she wheeled in her flight, and came back. 
 
 " Against a Dyak, Miss Raye," I said calmly, 
 " that pretty turn of speed would be about as 
 much use as a sparrow's against a sparrow hawk. 
 Please, won't you tell me why you suppose the 
 Dyak we saw to-day is likely to annoy you 1 
 There's nothing simpler than to give warning to 
 the police." 
 
 " He isn't," said Cristina, simply. " I am 
 likely to annoy him, very much indeed. I want 
 to be among the yellow alamandas in the court- 
 yard to-night, when he comes along but I shan't 
 let him see me if I can help it and after .... 
 That remains to be seen. I told you that I 
 thought it, and he, were connected." 
 
 " Do you mean the Dyak and the danger of 
 fire ? " I asked, suddenly enlightened. 
 
 Cristina nodded. 
 
 " Well, I can't " 
 
 " No, of course not. That doesn't alter it. I
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 171 
 
 don't know that I could tell you just why yet. 
 I keep asking myself ' Who benefits if the town 
 is destroyed ? ' and the answer isn't quite, quite 
 clear. If it was, I should know what to do. But 
 I may tell you " 
 
 "Imagine the waste. Disgusting, I call it. 
 And they say the Dutch are a thrifty people." 
 Mrs. Ash's voice suddenly sounded just over our 
 shoulders I dare say we had been walking more 
 slowly than we knew. 
 
 " \Vhat waste, dear Ashie ? " asked Cristina. 
 
 " They say there's four thousand tons in each 
 of them. If you don't call that waste, why, you 
 won't call anything. And I dare say it might set 
 light to something. Carelessness like that when 
 people at home are paying such a price by the 
 gallon " 
 
 I am sure Cristina did not know it but in her 
 excitement she actually pinched my arm, on 
 which her hand was resting. Still, her voice was 
 very calm. 
 
 " It was the old lady who said so ? " 
 
 " No. The young married one. She looked 
 so worried that I watched to see what the matter 
 was. And when her husband came in, she gave 
 a sort of jump, and said in English because 
 everyone was talking English just then ' Have 
 they stopped the running of the oil ? ' And he 
 answered her in Dutch, with a frown. They are 
 bad tempered, these foreigners. And wasteful. 
 Letting tanks with four thousand tons in thein
 
 172 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 if the place was English, there'd be none of this 
 nonsense." 
 
 She turned off the tap of her speech, and marched 
 silently back to the ship. I don't know what she 
 saw, as she looked straight ahead of her into the 
 dark of the hot, low sky. Probably a stone-paved 
 London street, bright with frost ; snow like sugar 
 icing piled upon the roof-tops ; people in furs 
 and ulsters hurrying by. . . . What I saw was 
 something less pleasing a vision of great oil- 
 tanks exploding all round us like volcanoes, of a 
 street running into one single blaze of twelve 
 thousand coolies rushing about like stampeded 
 beasts in a prairie re ... of the jungle, and the 
 alligators, and the ourang-outangs, and the Dyaks, 
 behind us ; the sea covered with flaming oil, before. 
 
 When we got back to the boat, Cristina beckoned 
 me into the empty dining-saloon, and stood there 
 in the garish glitter of the electric light, her face 
 paler than usual, her eyes gleaming like the blue 
 sparks of a dynamo. 
 
 " Have you learned enough Malay to follow a 
 conversation ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes," I said. I am a good linguist, and the 
 pigeon-Malay of these seas is about the easiest 
 language in the world. I was by this time fairly 
 fluent in Malay, though my Dutch was nothing 
 to boast of. 
 
 "Put on khaki," said the Kris-Girl, "it's less 
 easily seen at night. And go to that house with 
 the yellow alamanda, and stay near it for a good
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 173 
 
 while, and see if the Dyak comes. If he does, 
 try and hear anything he says to anyone. Try your 
 best, Mr. Garden. You don't know how much 
 may depend on it." 
 
 " I've some idea," I said. " I'll take a re- 
 volver, though I suppose it's breaking at least 
 half a dozen Dutch laws to do so. And if he 
 seems to be up to any nonsense, I'll use it. Still 
 I can't see what connection this love-making 
 business has with the attempts on the oil receivers. 
 That might be the work of a lunatic or a Malay 
 who wants to revenge some insult ; they're quite 
 capable of it." 
 
 " It might, but it just isn't," said Cristina. 
 The violent electric light shone full on her face ; 
 she was as pale as a pearl, but whether through 
 excitement, or mere weariness, I could not tell. 
 It struck me hard just then that I had not the 
 right to ask not the right to know not any 
 right to shield her, however weary or anxious she 
 might be. 
 
 Well I swallowed the hardness down, as one 
 does, somehow. 
 
 " Good-night," I said, perhaps a little shortly. 
 There was so much I could not say. ... 
 
 She remained in the empty saloon ; she did 
 not sit down. I looked back as I went to my 
 cabin to change, and saw her, with her head bent, 
 standing very still. I could not make the re- 
 motest guess as to what she might be thinking of. 
 
 I did not particularly fancy the job on which I
 
 174 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 was engaged, but still, it was clear to me that no 
 suspicion or even guess, concerning the danger 
 that threatened the town, ought to be neglected. 
 It was useless, I knew, to say anything to the 
 Dutch authorities. Neither the Kris-Girl nor I 
 had the shadow of proof to offer, and the mind of 
 the Hollander moves slowly. We should only 
 have been told to mind our own business per- 
 haps to stop on the ship. 
 
 The night was purple-dark, with nd light but 
 starlight. The town was a blaze of electric lamps, 
 but down the road, and nearing the villas, there 
 were many lakes of black shadow. In one of 
 these, the house of the yellow alamandas stood. 
 
 I thought everyone must be out, for there 
 seemed to be no lights about the place, except a 
 sort of nightlight in one upper room. The villa 
 ran round three sides of a square ; it had two 
 stories, the upper supported by white stone 
 pillars. Wide verandahs extended completely 
 round both stories, and there was a fine staircase 
 of some whitish stone. By the glimmer of the 
 night-lamp, I saw something that startled me a 
 little an iron grille across one end of the upper 
 verandah, tightly shut. It had no doubt been 
 placed there originally to protect some room 
 where valuables were kept, but it was now un- 
 doubtedly being used as a means of imprison- 
 ment, for the one lighted room was within, and 
 I could see a white figure moving. So the story 
 about the jealous old husband was true !
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 175 
 
 " A beastly dangerous sort of thing to do," I 
 thought. " There's no way of getting in or out 
 of that end verandah except through the gate. 
 . . . What if there were a fire ? " 
 
 On that my heart gave a jump, and some chain 
 of separate links suddenly snapped itself together 
 in my mind. 
 
 " Of course," I all but cried out. " He would 
 a Dyak they'd dare anything. With an oil- 
 tank alight in the town, the old husband would 
 fly to unlock the gate. And she'd be let out in 
 the middle of the night, in a wild confusion, with 
 no one on the look-out. And he wouldn't spirit 
 her off a prisoner in the steamer after all." 
 
 Here I checked, feeling as if a cold drop of 
 water had slipped down my spine. 
 
 " But the steamer leaves at daylight to- 
 morrow," I thought. The inference was so obvious 
 that I felt for the butt of the revolver I had put 
 into a handy pocket. 
 
 " No, he doesn't with Cristina in the dashed 
 town," I said to myself. I had been standing 
 some way from the villa, in the shade. Now I 
 began to walk quietly round to the back, for I 
 judged that the room with the light had an open- 
 ing on the side of the forest, and that this was the 
 likeliest place to flush my quarry. 
 
 Providentially, there was a clump of orna- 
 mental crotons in the right place. I got into 
 them, and looked about me. The bedroom had a 
 window to the back, a window wreathed in yellow
 
 176 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 alamanda. I could see that, for the light seemed 
 to have been turned up a little. I settled down 
 for a long wait, wishing to heaven I could smoke. 
 
 As it happened, my wait was not two minutes. 
 I was scarcely well settled among the bushes, when 
 the light went up a little more, and a slim figure 
 in a very loose, transparent muslin robe, came to 
 the window in the wall, and looked down. 
 
 " By Jove ! " I said to myself, just stopping 
 a whistle in time. 
 
 She was half-caste undoubtedly I should have 
 said a bit more but she was pretty. Yes, I 
 should think so. A dark, slender, slip of a thing, 
 with black hair falling straight as a cloak of satin 
 to somewhere about her knees ; a figure that 
 seemed to vibrate like a flower-stalk as she stood ; 
 eyes that even in the dim lamp-light, even at 
 twenty feet height, shone warm and starry. And 
 the Dyak chief thought her worth burning down 
 a city for, did he ? Well, from a mere man's 
 point of view, he did not seem so very far wrong. 
 
 She stood leaning far out among the alamandas 
 for the great golden flowers were trained about 
 the back of her room as well as the front and I 
 saw that she was watching. In about a minute 
 more, the Dyak stood below. I had not heard 
 him come, I had not even seen his approach. He 
 seemed to have sprung up out of the earth ; and 
 I realised, with unpleasant distinctness, that his 
 movements and bushcraft, compared to mine, 
 were as the progress of a weasel matched with
 
 THE DANGEROUS TOWN 177 
 
 that of a working bullock. I stiffened myself in 
 the effort to keep still and unseen. 
 
 But the Dyak was speaking. 
 
 " Red Flower," he said softly, " is he out ? " 
 
 " Hush, he is in, pretending to sleep down 
 below," was her reply. 
 
 " Good," said the copper statue in the twilight. 
 " To-morrow, you and I, with my tribe, will be 
 far away in the jungle, and after to-morrow it 
 will be my brown tree-house for you, instead of 
 this old monkey's home." 
 
 The girl leaned far out over the window-sill. 
 Her hair fell a good yard or two down the wall. 
 
 " Be careful," she said, and I could see that 
 she was breathing very quickly. " Be careful of 
 yourself." 
 
 " I walk in the darkness like the snake, and in 
 the forest I go like the wild monkey of the woods," 
 replied the Dyak. " There is no fear for me." 
 
 I looked up again at the girl she was so won- 
 derfully pretty, that it was an inevitable thing 
 to do, but I gave her only one glance, of that I 
 am sure. Still when I turned my eyes back to 
 the Dyak, he was not there. He had vanished again. 
 
 The girl, with a gesture of farewell that would 
 have immortalised any sculptor who could have 
 fixed it in marble, seemed to sink back among the 
 alamandas, and the light went down. In two 
 seconds more, I was running hard for the front of 
 the house. I dare say I made a noise. I did not 
 care, for I remembered that I had seen a bicycle 
 12
 
 178 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 leaning up against the well curb in the courtyard 
 whose, I neither knew nor cared and if my 
 guess was right, it lay with that bicycle and 
 myself to save the town. 
 
 I was horribly out of practice ; I hopped and 
 hopped, trying to get on, like some absurd, 
 gigantic frog. But when I got my feet on the 
 pedals, they remembered that I had held three 
 championships, in eighteen hundred and some- 
 thing, and the wheels went round to some purpose. 
 
 Ghost-white in the electric glare of the town, I 
 saw the sinister forms of the huge oil-tanks, when 
 I swung round the bend of the road. Surely they 
 were well-lighted, well-watched, too, in such a 
 place as this ? And yet there had been two 
 interrupted attempts already : one before we 
 came, of what nature I did not know, the other 
 only a single night past for the cutting of the 
 oil-pipe could have been nothing else. After see- 
 ing the Dyak appear and vanish as he did, I 
 wondered less at the inability of the watchmen to 
 catch him. Moreover, the jungle came very close 
 up behind the tanks. 
 
 He might be there now. He might be there 
 now. The downward stroke of the pedals beat it 
 out, along the wide, hard road. I saw the steamer 
 lying by the quay ; Cristina's face leapt up before 
 me. I bent over the handle-bar, and the night 
 wind, drenched with perfume, screamed in my 
 face, and the pedals, speeding up, declared " He 
 is there now. He is there now."
 
 Round the corner, behind the range of tanks, 
 I swung with such a curve that the bicycle skidded 
 violently, and staggered like a drunken thing for 
 a hundred yards or more. As soon as I could stop it, 
 I leapt off. It dropped on the road with a clang. 
 
 The thing was happening as I came. I had 
 not time to think, not time to do anything but 
 act. Cristina was running among the gigantic 
 shadows of the tanks, where the glaring arc-lights 
 made a maze of black and white upon the ground. 
 She was running in and out, doubling like a hunted 
 hare, faster than she had run that evening on the 
 path outside the villas. I had never seen any 
 woman thing run like it. And behind her, catch- 
 ing her up as a sparrow-hawk catches up a 
 sparrow, ran the Dyak. 
 
 One cry I heard from Cristina as I rushed to- 
 wards her. 
 
 " Put it out ! Forty-nine ! " 
 
 I thank Heaven to this day that I had the sense 
 to understand, and the determination to leave her 
 yes, even to leave her to the Dyak. Forty-nine 
 was one tank further on. I ran to it for my life, 
 and for the lives of all Balik Papan. 
 
 In the shadow underneath' the great tank a 
 spark was creeping . . . creeping. 
 
 There is nothing easier in the world than to put 
 out a fuse, even when it is very close indeed to the 
 plug of dynamite. It only needs a sharp knife 
 or a good set of teeth. I hadn't the one, but I 
 had the other. I bit it off, in time.
 
 180 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Then but it was really good luck more thaft 
 anything else that caused me to wing the Dyak 
 in one leg. I might have shot him dead, or 
 missed him. One would have been dangerous, 
 in the absence of evidence, the other well, it did 
 not happen. 
 
 At the sound of the shot, an Amboynese soldier 
 in full uniform came trotting up, rifle over his 
 shoulder. Of course he arrested Cristina and 
 me ; and of course there was turning out of 
 guards, and extracting of sleepy officials from 
 their beds, and red tape, and trouble all round. 
 You would have thought we had been trying to 
 burn down the town, instead of trying to save 
 it at the risk of our lives, if you had been there. 
 But after a while they got on to the facts, aided 
 by the remains of the fuse, and then 
 
 Well, then they said we had better get on to 
 the steamer and go away as quick as we could ; 
 Balik Papan was no place for tourists. I remem- 
 ber a certain tall, pink, fat official in pyjamas 
 escorted us down to the ship, yawning terribly as 
 he went, and told us, perfunctorily, that he was 
 obliged to us. I did not think he looked it. The 
 night watchman on the gangway was openly 
 curious ; he seemed to think we were both under 
 arrest for some anarchistic crime. He looked 
 disappointed when the pyjama'd functionary and 
 his attendant soldiers went away, without leaving 
 any suggestions as to handcuffs. 
 
 They had tied the Dyak up promptly, with no
 
 181 
 
 particular consideration for his broken leg, before 
 they went into our case at all, so we had the 
 satisfaction of knowing that he was likely to get 
 his deserts. He did, at the mouth of a dozen 
 rifles, two days later. 
 
 " Miss Kris-Girl/' I said, as we separated to go 
 to our cabins, " why did you not play fair ? " 
 
 " Where would you and the town have been if 
 I had ? " was her illogical answer. " It needed 
 somebody at both^ends. I meant to ask you to 
 help me, all along ; but you were troublesome, so 
 I had to " 
 
 " Deceive." 
 
 " Hard words break no bones," she said coolly. 
 " Call it anything you like. I knew it would take 
 two to catch that Dyak, and it did as a matter 
 of fact, he caught me stalking him, and was going 
 to make sure I shouldn't tell, when you came up. 
 I hadn't even time to stop the fuse he went 
 for me with his kris, and I could only run. . . . 
 You were right, but not as right as you thought ; 
 I did hold my own against him, for just a little 
 bit, because I was so very, very frightened. Then 
 he began to catch me up, and then if you had 
 not come ' 
 
 I think she saw what was in my face, for she 
 turned into her cabin quickly. And I, seeing 
 that she had no wish to hear me, went away to 
 mine.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 
 
 THE day was one of pure silver, such as one only 
 sees in these still waters of Malaysia. The sky, 
 shaded by a light wash of cloud, was silver, the 
 silver-glass sea met it without a break. Back 
 from the shearing bow of the steamer ran two 
 blue folds of water ; everything else was of the 
 one silver hue, save for sharp pen-scratches of 
 black made by the flying-fish as they struck and 
 skimmed, low down on the waveless glass. It 
 was early in the day ; few passengers were about, 
 and no land in sight. A sky, a place, an hour, of 
 perfect peace. 
 
 Sitting in my deck armchair, I smoked and 
 looked out over the rail at nothing in particular. 
 I do not know that I was thinking of anything in 
 particular either, unless certain dim visions of 
 Cannon Street on a November afternoon could be 
 described as thoughts. They contrasted agree- 
 ably with what I saw. 
 
 Mrs. Ash's needles had been clicking away be- 
 hind me for so long that I had almost ceased to 
 182
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 183 
 
 hear the sound ; I think I must have been near 
 to dozing, there on the high promenade deck of 
 the Dutch steamer, with the parted seas sounding 
 like shaken silk on the bow, and the Malayan 
 passengers singing monotonously, somewhere for- 
 ward. . . . 
 
 " Did you get your gum ? " 
 
 The question, to my sleepy perception, came 
 through the air like a shot. I sat up, and swung 
 round. 
 
 " What gum ? " I asked, defensively, scenting 
 a meaning that I did not care for. 
 
 " Gum dammit, or whatever its impious name 
 is ? " replied the old lady, clicking faster than 
 ever, but lifting her eyes off her work to fix them 
 on me. 
 
 It came into my head just then, irrelevantly 
 and absurdly, that she must surely sleep in that 
 preposterous black bonnet of 1880, with the three 
 upright feathers, and the tinkling danglements of 
 jet. I could not recollect that I had ever seen 
 her without it. Did the late Mr. Ash strange 
 thought that there must once have been an Ash 
 male ! wake up in the silent watches of the 
 night, to see . . . 
 
 I awoke to the fact that she was waiting. 
 
 "Oh, gum damar," I replied. " I didn't want 
 any." 
 
 " Didn't you ? " replied Mrs. Ash. " Thought 
 so. Hump ! " 
 
 The small sharp snort that she emitted was not
 
 184 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 exactly rude, but, considered as a criticism of 
 my character and aims in general, it was morti- 
 fying. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Ash," I said, drawing my chair 
 back to hers, " one may be engaged in com- 
 mercial negotiations about a particular product 
 especially one that has lately become so impor- 
 tant as gum damar without " 
 
 " One may," she said, suddenly biting off a 
 woollen thread in a way that I cannot tell how 
 seemed to throw doubt on the whole of my 
 statement. 
 
 I felt myself becoming rather hot. 
 
 " But I am so engaged," I said. " I have been 
 getting facts of the kind I want all through. It's 
 really important. Haven't you heard that the 
 Army Flying Corps " 
 
 " No," cut in Mrs. Ash. She put down the piece 
 of web she was weaving, took up another portion, 
 and, stabbing in a pair of fresh needles, seemed 
 to dismiss the last remark. 
 
 " Is Puhi Panas the centre of the trade ? " she 
 snipped out, working busily. 
 
 " Why I think Macassar is rather but Puhi 
 Panas is worth seeing, when one's there*." 
 
 "Worth seeing when one's there," repeated 
 Mrs. Ash. She did not say in so many words that 
 Pulu Panas was some eighteen hundred miles from 
 the roadsteads of Macassar, but the inference was 
 clear. 
 
 Now, in spite of the fact that the Kris-Girl's
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 185 
 
 chaperon was thus proving herself hostile, or at 
 least aggressive, I did not dislike the old lady. 
 Nor did I think that she actually disliked me. 
 So I threw away the last third of my cigar, pulled 
 my chair closer to the flashing needles, and asked 
 plainly, as became a plain man 
 
 " Why don't you want me in your party ? " 
 
 But Mrs. Ash was not to be defeated by the 
 use of her own sharp-shooting methods. She 
 replied with perfect coolness, answering my 
 thoughts instead of my words, 
 
 " Because knit two, purl three you're too 
 old. And because impossibilities are impossible 
 anyhow. Seven, eight, nine, ten. And one." 
 
 I did not agree with the first half of her remark, 
 and I did not like the second. I said so, avoid- 
 ing the main point at issue as skilfully as I could. 
 
 " Three years we've been at it," was the old 
 lady's reply. "Steamers, trains, hotels. Hotels, 
 trains, steamers. Waterfalls, castles, forts, is- 
 lands, native dances, native kings all of 'em 
 dirty customs of the countries, every one of 'em 
 nasty. And men. White men, half-white, Euro- 
 peans, colonials, German, Dutch, God knows 
 what. All of them after her, and a lot of them 
 after what she's got. She doesn't want 'em. 
 c Keep 'em off, Ashie, sweep 'em out/ she says 
 to me. And I do. I'm paid for it." 
 
 " How, exactly," I said, looking the old lady 
 straight in the face, "do you propose to keep me 
 off?"
 
 186 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Purl three, knit two," said Mrs. Ash. "Same 
 as all the rest of 'em. By telling you it's no good. 
 And one, two, three." 
 
 " What do they do then ? " I asked. 
 
 " Some of them are fools enough to go on." 
 The needles stabbed at me viciously, withdrawing 
 themselves just in time, at the end of every 
 stroke. 
 
 I said nothing, and sat still. As a business 
 man, I have found it an excellent plan, when you 
 want to make the other fellow talk. 
 
 Mrs. Ash was no exception. After a flourish 
 with the needles that would certainly have been 
 a fantasia if executed on the piano, she laid the 
 work on her lap, looked all round, and then said 
 cautiously 
 
 " I'll tell you what. It won't be anyone. But 
 it would be better you than Schintz." 
 
 " Schintz ? " I said. I had been away from 
 the Kris-Girl and her guardian for a while, trying 
 to ... well, no matter . . . let us say, trying to 
 work out the gum damar problem. And having 
 failed in ... no matter what ... I had joined 
 their wanderings once more, only twenty-four 
 hours ago. Therefore I had not heard of Schintz. 
 
 " He's a Dutch-German-Austrian, and the King 
 of Pulu Panas. It's outside Dutch possessions, 
 and he really owns it," explained Mrs. Ash. " As 
 for what Cristina thinks of him, it's one, two, 
 three, four never easy to say. But I think, of 
 all the foreigners I ever saw, he's and eight, nine
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 187 
 
 ten the foreignest. That's he at the other side 
 of the deck," she explained with Victorian punc- 
 tiliousness of grammar. 
 
 I looked, and behold, it was the Beast. 
 
 I had called him that to myself, when I saw 
 him in the smoking-room, the night before. He 
 had sat there for half an hour or so, smoked a long 
 Borneo cigar spitting ^unpleasantly the while 
 and gone out without addressing anyone. In the 
 intervals of listening to the pleasant babble of 
 the third officer, I had looked at him, and decided 
 that he was a beast a bounding beast. He had 
 such flaxen hair, and it was parted in such a clipped 
 oily way. And his face was pinkish and whitish. 
 Moreover, his moustache was trained above his 
 thick red lips into a Kaiser Wilhelm brush a 
 thing I hate. And he half shut his eyes, and 
 looked under the lids, with his chin up. He had 
 fat legs, and thinnish arms, a combination that 
 tells of self-indulgence. Worst of all, he had 
 beautiful hands, pinky-white, like his face, and 
 flourished them as he smoked. His feet were 
 small and very flat. I never took such a dislike 
 to any man in my life. 
 
 And there he was on deck, in a long chair, with 
 his chin tilted up, looking at me under his eyelids. 
 The captain was sitting near him, and talking 
 to him with an emphasis and interest that marked 
 him out at once as the " star passenger" of the 
 trip. " King " of Pulu Panas, was he ? No 
 doubt he gave and took more cargo than anyone
 
 188 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 in the archipelago. Well, if he were Emperor of 
 Malaysia, I disliked him none the less. 
 
 " Has that pink beast been paying attentions 
 to Miss Raye ? " I asked. The enchanted peace 
 and beauty of the morning had gone all in a 
 breath ; it was simply a greyish shiny day, with 
 fish jumping about. . . . 
 
 Mrs. Ash nodded her three plumes in the direc- 
 tion of the main companion. " Look/' she said. 
 
 Cristina had come up the broad stairway, and 
 was making for her chair. She wore something 
 thin and pink, as crisp as a new flower, and she 
 had little white shoes with ivory buckles. Schintz 
 had seen her coming before I did ; he got out her 
 chair in two seconds, pushed it forward, and 
 deftly lifted those small feet on to the rest as she 
 sat down. Then he tucked a cushion at her 
 back, deliberately, looking at her under his fat 
 eyelids. Cristina just as deliberately pulled the 
 cushion out, and dropped it on the deck. 
 
 " It's too hot," she said. 
 
 I went over and joined the two. Cristina in- 
 troduced me to Heir Schintz, and seemed to pass 
 him over to my charge. Schintz looked for a 
 Chair, drew it up unnecessarily close to Cristina's, 
 and began to talk to her in perfect English. He 
 turned his back on me, in doing so, with the ut- 
 most nonchalance. 
 
 I stuck to my guns, and talked to her too. She 
 answered both of us politely, and seemed to see 
 nothing odd in the situation. Schintz kept hia
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 189 
 
 back to me, and I talked over his shoulder. I 
 would have gone on doing so all day. But the 
 bell for breakfast rang, and released us. 
 
 " Mr. Garden, how could you ? " asked Cris- 
 tina in the alley-way. " It looked so'absurd." 
 
 " Well, if you don't want to look absurd all the 
 time, don't let Schintz hang about," I replied. 
 " How can you be civil to such a bounder " 
 
 " Foreigners aren't bounders ; they're different, 
 that's all. And we've got to be civil to Mr. 
 Schintz." 
 
 " Why on earth ? " 
 
 " Because Pulu Panas belongs to him, and he 
 never lets anyone see the Buddhist ruins unless 
 he likes. Hardly anyone ever goes there, it's not 
 on the steamer line, but the ruins are really won- 
 derful, only second to Boro Budur. It's a pity 
 he is so crabby about it. It's his launch that 
 will take us to the island, when we leave this 
 ship at Wangi. You can't do anything at Pulu 
 Panas without Mr. Schintz." 
 
 " Is there a Mrs. Schintz ? " 
 
 " Why no," said Cristina hesitatingly. I 
 guessed at the usual Oriental household. "We 
 were thinking of staying there," she added. " It's 
 the only place." 
 
 " Then I must be civil to Schintz," I said, " for 
 I mean to be asked too." 
 
 I was civil, though it cost me more of my self- 
 respect than any man can afford to dispense with. 
 JL did not fancy the idea of Cristina staying in the
 
 ISO KRIS-GIRL 
 
 house of that pink beast, with only the old lady 
 for protection. And I attained my end. Cris- 
 tina skilfully turned the talk to the accommoda- 
 tion on Pulu Panas one afternoon when we were 
 drawing near the island, and expressed much dis- 
 tress on hearing (what she knew very well already) 
 that there was no hotel of any kind. She asked 
 me where I was going to stay, and I said I did 
 not know ; I might not stop at all. 
 
 " Mr. Schintz has been so good as to ask us to 
 stay," she said. A significant pause followed. 
 Schintz deliberately examined his glassy nails. 
 
 " But I am not sure that we can accept his in- 
 vitation," she went on. " I dare say we shall go 
 on to Thursday Island with you." 
 
 Schintz appeared to come to a decision. 
 
 " I should be happy to see Mr. Guardian too," 
 he remarked, displaying the curves of his disgust- 
 ing pinky-white hands. 
 
 " My name is Garden," I corrected. 
 
 " Really but my knowledge of your English 
 tongue is, unfortunately, so imperfect," replied 
 Schintz, with easy fluency. 
 
 "I am much obliged by your invitation," I 
 said. " I should like to see something of the 
 Buddha Temple. It belongs to you, I under- 
 stand ? " 
 
 " The island belongs to me, and the ruins are 
 included. The people also are my property." 
 
 " But that is impossible ! " exclaimed Cristina. 
 
 " Pardon me, not at all. When I acquired the
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 191 
 
 island, a good many years ago, it was native 
 owned. Subsequently Portugal took possession. 
 The Portuguese are not opposed to a modified form 
 of servitude serfage we will not call it slavery, 
 for it is the name that smells in the nostrils of 
 your English Puritans. For a consideration, I 
 was allowed to retain the rights over the persons of 
 the people that I had previously held. Without 
 my permission, no one can leave Pulu Panas or 
 enter it. What work I require on my plantations 
 is performed by labourers permanently attached 
 to the estates." 
 
 "Slaves?" I asked politely. Schintz's reply 
 was addressed to Cristina. 
 
 " If you will take the binoculars," he said, 
 " you can see the island, very far away from 
 here. This afternoon we stop at Wangi, and 
 there my launch will meet us to go to Pulu Panas." 
 He touched her hand the one with the great 
 Chinese ring on it as he gave her the glasses. 
 
 " That is a strange ring," he said. " May I 
 look at it ? " 
 
 " I do not take it off," replied Cristina, and 
 a sudden paleness crept like a thin white veil 
 over her face. She let the hand drop to her 
 side, and took the binoculars in the other. They 
 began to talk about the island. 
 
 " What do you think of it all ? " I asked cau- 
 tiously. 
 
 " I think I'm dreaming," answered Cristina.
 
 192 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 We were standing out of the moonlight, in the 
 shadow of a horse-shoe archway that led to a 
 walled garden with flowers and fountains in it. 
 There was a verandah just above us, and it had a 
 wonderful screen of carved and pierced marble all 
 down the open part beautiful to look at, in that 
 tropic full moon, but calculated to rouse thoughts 
 of invisible listeners. 
 
 " To think that a Schintz should own all 
 this ! " she whispered. The scent of orange-trees, 
 fruiting and flowering, the cloying sweetness of 
 moon-white trumpet flower and pawpaw, came 
 through the open archway of the garden. From 
 the outer world across the wide central courtyard, 
 stole the unforgettable odour of Malaysia dust, 
 sandalwood, spice, and fish. A drum began to 
 beat down in the harbour to announce the depar- 
 ture of a sailing vessel ; it sounded like the hot 
 throbbing of a fevered heart. The night was still 
 and very warm. 
 
 "Yes," I said. "He is owner in every sense 
 of the word." I pointed to a slender Indonesian 
 woman with a spangled sari over her head, slip- 
 ping into the garden with a water- vase. " That 
 woman wore chains the best part of last year. She 
 had a child it is at the bottom of the harbour." 
 
 " Why ? " asked Cristina, her face white even 
 in the shadow of the archway. - 
 
 " Better not ask an ugly story," I said. " I 
 heard it in the village. I've heard a good many 
 things."
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 193 
 
 " I've guessed a good many," she said. A leaf 
 rustled somewhere. We stopped, and looked 
 about us. 
 
 " All to-day," I said presently, " I've had no 
 chance of speaking to you. That wasn't acci- 
 dental. Kris-Girl, I don't like this place, and I 
 wish we had never come." 
 
 " I don't like it but I don't wish that," she said. 
 
 I drew her a little forward into the moonlight, 
 and looked closely at her small pale face, with the 
 glittering blue eyes. There was something in it 
 that I knew. 
 
 " Again, Kris-Girl ? " I said, stepping back 
 into the shade. She nodded. 
 
 " What is it this time ? " I asked. 
 
 Before answering, she looked up at the screen 
 of carved marble. It was very close. 
 
 " Come into the garden ; the moonlight is better 
 than this," she said. ..." Maybe that screen 
 was put up just because people were likely to hide 
 in there out of the moon and talk . . ." 
 
 The garden did not seem to be overlooked 
 but in these places you never know. Anyhow, 
 we were out of earshot, standing there by the 
 great cool bowl of the fountain, where the 
 stephanotis spread a milky way of scented stars 
 along the marble curb, and orchids, pale gold 
 and dim purple in the moonlight, dropped from 
 the mango trees. 
 
 " I want to know," said Cristina, " where, and 
 to whom, he takes meat." 
 13
 
 194 ^KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Does he take meat ? and why should he 
 not ? " I asked perplexedly. As usual, I found 
 her rapid mind hard to follow. 
 
 " Every second night/' she said, " he takes it 
 in a basket. I saw him once, and then I watched 
 those marble screens are useful in some ways. 
 The moon has been on the wane since we came ; 
 he waits a little later every time he goes, so that 
 he can be sure of that dead sort of dark that comes 
 before moonrise. Once in two nights and not 
 more than twenty minutes' walk away. When he 
 comes back, the basket is empty." 
 
 " Why didn't you try and follow him not that 
 I think you ought," I asked. " If there's any- 
 thing odd about it though I can't see there is 
 that would be the best way. Let me do it for 
 you ; it wouldn't be the first time, would it ? " 
 
 The Kris-Girl laughed a little. 
 
 " One might as well try to follow a Red Indian," 
 she said. "It's well to know when you're out- 
 classed. He can hear you breathe fifty yards 
 away hear you think guess what you're going 
 to do before you know yourself. . . . He doesn't 
 know I have seen him, but that's because I never 
 dared to move away from the marble screen." 
 
 " Well, what do you propose to do ? " 
 
 " Keep looking out, and so must you. I don't 
 like that meat. And . . . it wasn't good meat. 
 It smelt. No, I don't know anything at all, or 
 suspect anything. But I feel something." 
 
 " How am I to tell you if I hear anything that
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 195 
 
 would interest you ? " I asked. " It seems as 
 if we could never get a word together. I don't 
 know how we have managed this." 
 
 " Oh, I'm in bed and asleep," she replied 
 calmly, " and you've gone for a walk to the 
 kampong. But it won't do to stay long. As to 
 getting notes carried, or anything of that sort, 
 it may not be easy. I wish you knew the Morse 
 code ; I learnt it years ago. It's the most useful 
 thing a traveller can know, after languages." 
 
 " But I do," I said eagerly. " My greatest chum 
 is a wireless engineer, and he taught me. I'm not 
 rapid, but I can send fairly, and take pretty well." 
 
 " Can you read like this ? " she asked, tap- 
 ping noiselessly with her slight fingers on the 
 marble basin. 
 
 " Yes. . . . You are saying ' I must go 
 back to my room.' ' 
 
 "Eight," said the Kris-Girl. "And I must. 
 Just one word. We have to stay here till the 
 next Dutch boat calls at Wangi, and that won't 
 be for ten days. I suppose you've noticed that 
 that " 
 
 " I should think so the Pink Beast ! It's like 
 his confounded hide." 
 
 " Well, if you see me polite, don't be as- 
 tonished. It's for a purpose." 
 
 " I wish to God you were out of it," I said. 
 " If one had understood but who could guess at 
 such a mediaeval arrangement of a place, in the 
 twentieth century ? "
 
 196 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " It's impossible if one hadn't seen it." 
 
 " Everything's possible east of Suez and 
 everything else, east of Malacca Straits, I know," 
 she said reminiscently. " The things poor Ashie 
 has been through ! There'll be somebody or 
 other here in a minute ; I feel it in my bones. 
 Good-night." 
 
 She fled up the archway like a night-moth on 
 the wing ; I was left alone with the dripping 
 fountain and the moon. 
 
 Someone did come ; Schintz himself, padding 
 softly on the marble I think he wore rubber 
 shoes. He looked at me, and passed on into the 
 house without a word. I saw that he carried an 
 empty basket in his hand. 
 
 Next day we were occupied with the antiquities 
 of Pulu Panas. It had rained punctually from 
 one o'clock till six, wet-season fashion, for several 
 days after our arrival. But now the weather 
 improved, and Pulu Panas became a place of 
 wonder and of jbeauty. 
 
 It was a large island, some thirty miles in cir- 
 cumference. The greater part of it we never 
 saw ; I think there were secrets about the Schintz 
 plantations and their manner of working, not 
 meant for visitors to know. But the blue-velvet 
 mountains, the deep palm forests, the inlets and 
 fiords starred with plumy islets, and edged with 
 china-white coral sand, made a setting of supreme 
 loveliness to Schintz's palatial home, which had
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 197 
 
 been built mostly in the Indian style, and was 
 even more gorgeous than the other houses of 
 wealthy Malayan planters, that I had seen in my 
 wanderings up and down. Schintz, in his own 
 way, was hospitable : he fed us royally, and 
 provided excellent wines ; he had horses for us 
 to ride, a motor, a fine oil-launch for sea trips, 
 and a retinue of trained Javanese performers, 
 male and female, ready to dance and sing for 
 our amusement at a moment's notice. All the 
 same, I could see that he loved me not at all, 
 and that he loved the little Kris-Girl if such a 
 word describes the feelings of such a man much 
 more than was . . . than was . . . 
 
 Much more than was safe. The phrase cut 
 itself cleanly out in my mind, as I stood waiting 
 for Cristina and Mrs. Ash to start on a trip to the 
 Buddha ruins. 
 
 Why was it not safe ? The answer came, 
 sharp and plain. Because this man owned the 
 island and all that was on it, body and soul ; and 
 if Cristina rejected his advances as she un- 
 doubtedly would why, there would be only 
 myself to stand between her and plain mediaeval 
 capture or imprisonment. 
 
 " I wish to God the steamer was due," was the 
 result of my meditations. And then the women 
 came out, and Schintz spun up the drive in his 
 motor-car, and we started for the Buddha Temple. 
 
 I am not going to talk about the ruins of Pulu 
 Panas, though they are very wonderful, and ought
 
 198 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 to be better known. The truth is, that I hardly 
 took in anything of the amazing panorama of 
 terraced sculptures, smiling, squat-legged gods, 
 rock walls carved out into heavy, complicated 
 groups of figures and animals. It was the man- 
 oeuvres of Schintz that chiefly occupied my 
 attention. He attached himself to Cristina, and 
 stayed beside her all the afternoon. Not a word 
 could I slip in. Mrs. Ash, secretly hostile to 
 " eights " as ever, and myself, were left to follow 
 side by side, almost in silence. I thought the 
 old lady did not like the way that things were 
 going, but it was clear she was far from realising 
 the actual dangers of the situation, and I had no 
 wish whatever to enlighten her. 
 
 The yellow sun of afternoon climbed up the 
 hill of sculptured stone, waking to momentary life 
 the impassive faces of Buddha images, and throw- 
 ing out in a relief that was almost startling, the 
 spirited groups of battles, triumphs, funerals. 
 Close on it followed the rising flood of dusk. 
 From the unbroken jungle that rose behind the 
 hill of ruins, black flying-foxes began to flit 
 through the golden twilight, like evil thoughts 
 invading a pious soul. It was surely time to 
 go home. But Cristina and Schintz still lingered, 
 away there on the top of the hill, where the 
 ruined central shrine was drinking up the last 
 drops of day. 
 
 " Cristina ! " called the chaperon, shrilly and 
 with determination. She had to call more than
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 199 
 
 once before they came ; but once down the hill, 
 Schintz hurried us all into the motor, and took 
 the driving wheel without a word. His pinky 
 features showed no emotion of any kind, and he 
 talked as usual. Nevertheless, I caught a look 
 just one under those half-dropped eyelids, that 
 gave the lie to every calm word, every quiet move- 
 ment he made. If ever a man had self-control 
 when he chose to have it that man was assuredly 
 the Pink Beast. 
 
 Things were becoming strenuous, for a plain 
 business man like myself. 
 
 And meeting that look, I was glad to remember 
 that I had a Browning pistol in my luggage. I 
 resolved to load it that night. 
 
 Schintz, with his usual demoniac cleverness, 
 
 contrived by one device and another to keep 
 
 Cristina and myself from speech together during 
 
 the evening. But before she went up the marble 
 
 stairs with Mrs. Ash to her room, the Kris-Girl 
 
 contrived to give me the sign I wanted. Under 
 
 the very eyes of Schintz, sitting upon a great gilt 
 
 settee beside him, she dropped one hand half 
 
 under her skirt, and beat out a few words long, 
 
 short, long, short, in the invaluable Morse code. 
 
 " He proposed I refused look out." 
 
 When I went up to my room, I remembered 
 
 that Schintz had not, for one moment, been absent 
 
 from his guests since dark. . . . Was he going 
 
 out that night with his mysterious basket ? 
 
 Somehow, I wanted to know. I leaned out of
 
 200 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 my window, and watched, till I was tired of watch- 
 ing. But Schintz remained in the house. The 
 prisoner, whoever he was, went hungry. 
 
 Every morning som party of pleasure was pro- 
 posed. On the next day it was an excursion by 
 launch to the great coral reef that extended out 
 to sea below the house. This reef was noted for 
 its splendid shells ; the house and garden were 
 decorated with many fine specimens gathered at 
 low tide immense " balers " with tessellated 
 curves and whorls, and orange-porcelain lips ; 
 Venus's combs, with long scarlet and yellow 
 teeth ; pearl-lined "snail" shells as large as one's 
 head ; nautilus, gigantic clam I cannot begin 
 to name the different kinds. For once, Mrs. Ash 
 was pleased with the day's programme, and ex- 
 hibited interest. She said she could put her shells 
 in a cabinet, and save at least five pounds that 
 would otherwise be spent on china ornaments. . . . 
 
 The launch made a long curve out, and then 
 ran back inside the reef, bringing us fairly close 
 to the house again. We could have walked out 
 much more quickly from the terrace below the 
 garden, but a coral reef is a nasty thing to walk 
 on. It was pleasanter to work slowly along the 
 deep-water channels in the comfortable boat, 
 landing now and then on a prickly patch of coral 
 to secure the coveted treasure. The sun climbed 
 high and grew hotter and hotter as we pursued 
 our game ; the launch's deck was covered with 
 the spoil,
 
 201 
 
 " Oh, I am hot ! " sighed Cristina by and by, 
 drawing up her arm from an aquamarine-coloured 
 pool, out of which she had just captured a brown 
 shell, with a blue and green " eye." 
 
 Schintz, pinker than ever in the roasting sun, 
 smiled at her in a forgiving sort of way. 
 
 " I have thought of your comfort," he said. 
 He nodded to the Malayan launch-driver, and the 
 native produced a parcel from the cabin. Un- 
 doing it, Schintz handed to Cristina two ladies' 
 bathing suits, beautifully made, of black and of 
 light green silk. With them were tied up two silk 
 caps, two pairs of bathin shoes, and two towels. 
 
 " In my house," he said, a little grandilo- 
 quently, " there is always everything that a guest 
 can desire. If you wish to enjoy the refreshing 
 water there is a little way off a shallow with a 
 sand beach ; there ladies can bathe in safety from 
 any shark, and with no danger of being drowned." 
 
 " You are most kind," said Cristina gravely. 
 She told me afterwards, that the bathing dresses 
 had made her suspicious, but for the moment 
 she could not tell of what, or why. " Mrs. Ash 
 and myself will be very glad to have a dip." 
 
 " You need not fear that you will be observed," 
 went on Schintz in his formal, too-good English, 
 " for this reason, that I and Mr. Garden will also 
 bathe, but at some considerable distance away." 
 
 "I'm n<jt much of a swimmer," I said. " Where 
 is it ? " 
 
 The launch was going again by this time.
 
 202 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Schintz pointed to a natural swimming-bath in 
 the reef, at some little distance from us a beau- 
 tiful blue-green pool edged with wonderful coral 
 bouquets, and surrounded by the ivory-coloured 
 rocks left clear by the low neap tide. It com- 
 municated through a narrow passage with the 
 outer sea, but one had only to glance at it in order 
 to know that it was free from sharks. And in 
 any case, sharks do not come into such confined 
 and trap-like spaces. 
 
 " Are you going to swim ? " asked Cristina of 
 Schintz. 
 
 " Yes/' he answered, pointing to a small bundle 
 of bathing things. "It is my favourite spot, for, 
 like Mr. Garden, I am not good enough swimmer 
 to venture into the open sea. But that place 
 seems to have been made by nature for poor 
 swimmers." 
 
 We were running on past the reef ; the great 
 pool lay like some wonderful jewel, part sapphire, 
 part emerald, on the ivory of the reef. I never 
 saw such a colour. 
 
 "It is deep ? " asked Cristina. 
 
 " Oh, yes. But it is so narrow that one can 
 come to the side and rest in a half -minute at any 
 time. Now let me show you yours." 
 
 The launch was stopping at a beautiful bit of 
 white sand beach, wreathed with trailing creepers 
 that fell down from the trees above. Here the 
 water was green and clear, and very shallow. 
 
 " You will be careful," said Schintz authorita-
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 
 
 203 
 
 tively. " You will not go out too far ; it is quite 
 safe in the shallows, but not perhaps if you were 
 to venture into the deep. We shall leave you 
 here and go on to our pool." 
 
 " Mr. Schintz please ! " said Cristina, looking 
 unusually pretty and coaxing. 
 
 I saw the heavy eyes flash under the down- 
 dropped lids. " What is your pleasure ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " It is so silly but I am nervous, to think of 
 being all alone with Mrs. Ash in this wild place 
 while you bathe. Do send the launch back when 
 it has dropped you. What should I do if a shark 
 or something did happen to come ? Please let 
 your launchman stay near." 
 
 " But certainly," said Schintz with a killing 
 smile. " What you wish shall be done ; I know 
 that ladies are always timorous. The launch shall 
 instantly return when it has left Mr. Garden and 
 myself at the pool. Moreover, it shall continually 
 cruise up and down in front of you while you 
 bathe, so that you shall not have even the fear of 
 a shark." 
 
 We went off and left them on the beach ; and 
 I must say that I wondered a good deal at the 
 Kris-Girl's expressed nervousness, knowing as I 
 did that she was not afraid of anything on sea or 
 land. However, I had long since given up the 
 attempt to follow Cristina's mental processes. 
 As well might a stolid house-dog attempt to keep 
 pace with an Australian kangaroo.
 
 204 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 The launch dropped Schintz and myself at the 
 edge of the reef, and then started back towards the 
 coral-sand beach. We heard its quick heart- 
 beats growing fainter and fainter as it went. 
 
 Schintz and I climbed over the coral with 
 care ; it was mostly the spiked, sharp kind that 
 crumbles like biscuit under an unwary boot, 
 and cuts you cruelly if you fall. At the edge of 
 the swimming pool, a sort of entering place had 
 been made by breaking away all the fragile bits, 
 and laying bare a base of solid " brainstone." 
 It seemed that the spot was a favourite one with 
 our host, for I could see that a long track had 
 been cut through the branching coral of the reef, 
 right down from the beach below the house. At 
 high water the place might be unsafe, owing to 
 sharks ; but when the tide was low, as it was at 
 present, nothing more safe or delightful in the 
 way of a swimming place could be imagined. 
 
 Cristina has said since that she cannot imagine 
 how anything in the shape of a man can have 
 been as stupid and unsuspicious as I was ; but 
 I ask the candid reader, what was there for any 
 reasonable man to be suspicious about ; I knew 
 that Schintz did not wish me well ; that he re- 
 garded me as the only obstacle to his marriage 
 forced or otherwise with Cristina ; that he was 
 king of the island, and could do as he chose with 
 any creature on it. But it takes more than this 
 to make a sensible business man from the E.G. 
 district suspect murder. All that I . saw in
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 205 
 
 Schintz's proceedings was simply another device 
 to keep me apart from Cristina for an hour or 
 two. 
 
 We undressed together on a rather slippery 
 platform of brainstone coral, and got into the 
 bathing trunks that Schintz had provided. I 
 looked at the water carefully before diving in. 
 I am not a very clever diver, and want plenty of 
 depth to turn in. There seemed, however, to be 
 plenty here. From the branching coral fringe, 
 where living buds of lilac, pink, and green stood 
 up in the wavering chrysophrase of the water, 
 cavern after cavern, deep after deep, appeared to 
 open down and down. In these dim places, the 
 water seemed dark navy-blue colour, and the 
 jutting walls of coral were like palest pearl. The 
 depths of the pool were empty. Not a flower-like 
 medusa floated, not a silver fish showed sparks. 
 Most coral pools are full of ocean life ; but this 
 one was still and silent as a grave. 
 
 Now, one does not want to see living things in 
 a pool one is going to bathe in at all events, in 
 these equatorial lands, where the sea holds every 
 kind of stinging, biting, devouring horror in her 
 innocent-appearing arms but there was some- 
 thing about the peculiar deadness of that place 
 that touched my nerves. Cristina says it was my 
 subliminal consciousness. I think myself it was 
 the effect of being in company with a damned 
 sneak, and more or less suspecting everything he 
 said and did. But let that pass. The fact re-
 
 206 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 mains, that I did not want to dive in. I wanted 
 violently not to. 
 
 Schintz, undressed and in his trunks, was 
 balancing uneasily behind me on the brainstone 
 corals, waiting his turn to dive. For one moment 
 I hesitated ; it seemed so absurd to say one 
 wouldn't bathe, when one was there all ready ; 
 and then the explicable feeling of horror caught 
 me again, and I swore to myself I would not dive. 
 I looked at the far end of the pool ; it was empty, 
 save for a few long trails of seaweed drooping out 
 of a crack in the coral ; they waved with the slow 
 outward running of the tide. . . . 
 
 I do not know to this day whether I meant to 
 dive or not. But next moment the affair was de- 
 cided for me. Schintz, staggering on the slippery 
 coral, fell up against me, and I tumbled in. 
 
 I came up gasping, and saw my host still on the 
 coral platform, swearing loudly in Dutch and 
 German, and nursing a bleeding foot. He had 
 fallen among the sharp-edged points and beside 
 the smooth brainstone, and cut himself. 
 
 " Why did you not hurry with your confounded 
 dive ? " he yelled. " I have cut myself abomin- 
 ably." 
 
 It did not seem a very bad wound, all the same ; 
 the bleeding had almost stopped. 
 
 " Come on in ; the salt water will do it good," 
 I said. I was paddling about in my own unskilful 
 way, rather enjoying it now that I was in the 
 warm, pleasant water.
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 207 
 
 " I won't ; it will smart horribly," he said. 
 He sat down and began to bandage the foot with 
 his handkerchief. Oddly enough he did not look 
 at the foot, but at me. He watched me. I saw 
 that his face for the first time in my recollection 
 of him was not pink at all, but yellowish pale. 
 I thought him a coward to make such a fuss about 
 a little cut. 
 
 " It's a nice pool," I spluttered, trying to swim 
 " trudgeon." 
 
 " Can you swim to the other end ? " asked 
 Schintz. His foot was tied up now, and he stood 
 on the rocks, an ill-shapen, thin-armed, shrimp- 
 like creature. 
 
 " He's ten years younger than I," ran my 
 thoughts, " but if I looked like that, I'd keep my 
 clothes on. . . . Yes, I think so." I headed for 
 the far end . 
 
 It was at that moment that I heard the whistle 
 of the launch. Long, short, long, short, it was 
 blowing continuously and oddly. 
 
 " Is he mad, that engineer ? " cried Schintz, 
 listening, but never taking his eyes off me as I 
 swam. His face was yellower than ever, and a 
 strange thing I could see that his pinkish neck 
 and chest were also turning pale. 
 
 Something like an electric shock went through me. 
 It was not the engineer. Cristina was signalling. 
 
 I let my legs drop down, and paddled, listening, 
 sick with the thumping beats of my heart. Was 
 she in danger what in the name of God
 
 208 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 .... Long, short, long, short, the whistles 
 came, and I read them 
 
 " Don't swim. Don't swim." 
 
 Then" Death. Death." 
 
 Then a sudden long wail of the whistle, ending 
 in a screech. It and silence. 
 
 I said I was not a good swimmer, and it is 
 true. But if anyone had been near with a stop 
 watch just then, I fancy a record of twenty yards 
 or so if there is such a record would have gone 
 by the board. For I covered that distance in 
 something like three jumps through the water. I 
 did not aim for the place where the pink toad 
 was squatting, I made for a spot that had a pro- 
 jecting tongue of coral, scrambled up on to it, 
 regardless of cuts and punctures, and went for 
 my clothes. 
 
 In the midst of making a Laocoon of my per- 
 son and my hastily gathered garments, I was 
 suddenly struck as still as the stone Laocoon 
 itself. I had seen something in the water. 
 
 The long trails of seaweed were coming out of 
 the clefts in the coral, and floating towards my 
 end of the pool. And they were not seaweed. 
 
 You must remember that I was new to the 
 tropics. I did not understand what I saw at 
 first. When the long trails of seaweed that were 
 not seaweed floated nearer and still nearer, and I 
 saw that they were like elephants' trunks, tapering, 
 grey, twini g and wreathing, I could not guess 
 what it was that I was looking at, though the hair
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 209 
 
 seemed to crawl upon my head as the thing came 
 closer. I stood my ground on the edge of the 
 pool, and stared. 
 
 Not even when I caught a momentary glare 
 from a plate-like eye of sheer white and black 
 buried among the writhing elephant trunks, did 
 I guess. But when one of those trunks slowly 
 lifted itself from the water, and began creeping 
 over the coral to my feet when I saw that it 
 was studded on the livid grey underside with 
 countless white sucker-cups then I knew. I 
 sprang to the cleared path in the coral, and I ran. 
 
 It was unnecessary ; the long grey arm of the 
 octopus sank back into the pool as soon as I was 
 out of reach. Panting, the sweat streaming down 
 my face, I stood where I could get foothold, and 
 tossed on my clothes. Then I went back to the 
 edge of the reef, keeping well away from that 
 deadly pool, and halloed for the launch. 
 
 Up to this moment I had forgotten Schintz; 
 the sight of his scattered clothes recalled him to 
 my mind. I looked about, and behold, the Pink 
 Beast was stumbling over the coral reef towards 
 the house, clad only in his bathing trunks and a 
 pair of shoes. Just to accelerate his movements, 
 I took the Browning (which had been in my 
 pocket all day), and sent a shot up into the air. 
 He howled at that, and skipped faster. 
 
 I heard the launch coming now. In another 
 minute it had run to the edge of the reef. Crie- 
 tina and Mrs. Ash were in it ; two perfectly dry 
 14
 
 210 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 bathing dresses were folded up on a seat. The 
 Malay engineer was nowhere to be seen. 
 
 " Where's the launch-driver ? " I asked, as the 
 vessel stopped, clumsily, a good way from the 
 reef. 
 
 " Threw him in the sea," replied Mrs. Ash. 
 " He's not drowned, but I suppose he's cleaner 
 than most foreigners usually are by this time." 
 
 " Threw him who ? " 
 
 " I did. He was annoying Cristina. He was 
 on the edge. So I tipped him over, and we pulled 
 a lever, and it went. Lucky we were able to 
 stop it." 
 
 Her bonnet had not a ruffled feather. No human 
 being could possibly have felt cool on that glaring 
 reef, at that hour of the day, but Mrs. Ash looked 
 cool, mentally and physically. 
 
 " How dared he annoy her ? " 
 
 " Foreigners will dare anything. He took hold 
 of her arm to stop her blowing the whistle. I 
 don't know why she wanted to, but I wasn't 
 going to see a heathen nigger annoy Miss Raye 
 while I'm her chaperon. So I tipped him pop ! " 
 
 Cristina sitting under her parasol, looked quiet 
 enough, but there was a sort of sparkle about her 
 face that I was beginning to know by this time. 
 
 "I congratulate you, Kris-Girl," I said. "I 
 haven't time to talk about it, though. I wonder 
 can we get the launch back to where you left the 
 Malay ? " 
 
 " What for ? " asked Mrs. Ash.
 
 ABOUT A_PINK BEAST 211 
 
 "He's got to run it and us through the reefs 
 and over to Wangi before sundown to-night. We 
 can just about do it. There's a township there 
 Dutch government but better than none. I 
 don't think that Pulu Panas is healthy for any of 
 us just now." 
 
 I may have spoken quietly, but I did not feel 
 quiet. Since I had seen the pink toad hopping 
 over the reef to his house, I had realised that the 
 minutes of safety for our little party were running 
 out like the sand in an hour-glass when some 
 rough hand takes it up and shakes it. 
 
 Schintz's plan had failed, and ... we all knew 
 too much. 
 
 " He won't drive the launch. He's his master's 
 servant," said Cristina contemptuously. " Mr. 
 Garden if I had not seen one of those awful 
 things creeping on the reef, looking like like the 
 Devil if he turned himself into a spider if every- 
 thing hadn't jumped together in my mind like the 
 filings in a wireless coherer when the spark comes 
 through ; you you would have got into that 
 pool. Tell me, is there anything " 
 
 For answer, I went over to the edge of the pool 
 not without a qualm and sent seven shots 
 from my Browning right into the mass of wreathing 
 tentacles. They thrashed out of the water at 
 the first shot, and continued to beat the air, a 
 horrible mill of whirling arms, until the fifth 
 bullet had crashed home. Then they sank back, 
 and the hideous thing sank down into the indigo
 
 212 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 caverns below, where the silver of the reef showed 
 dimly through deep overlying water. I sent two 
 more shots in it as it sank, and reloaded my 
 pistol. When I looked at the launch again, Cris- 
 tina was crying. 
 
 " I don't mean it," she flashed. " I am just 
 upset." She scrubbed her tears mercilessly away. 
 " It's upsetting to have been almost too late. . . . 
 You won't get that Malay to drive you ; he 
 wouldn't dare." 
 
 " Let me in ; we've no time to lose," was my 
 reply. I jumped the gap between the launch and 
 the coral reef, and set her off as well as I could. 
 The steering was not difficult, and one could see 
 how she was stopped. 
 
 " You can't drive her to Wangi ; you don't 
 know the way," objected Cristlna. 
 
 " I know the way to drive a nigger, though," I 
 said, laying the Browning beside me on the seat, 
 as we came in sight of a damp and miserable 
 Malay, walking slowly through the shallows of 
 the reef water. 
 
 " Get on board," I told him in Malay. " You've 
 got to take us to Wangi." 
 
 The man hesitated. I took the pistol off the 
 seat, and aimed it. 
 
 " You'd better," I said. 
 
 " The Tuan Schintz will kill me," he muttered, 
 looking back towards the house. I could not see 
 the Pink Beast now ; he was safe within his own 
 walls, and if I knew him busy with pressing
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 213 
 
 and immediate plans against the safety of two at 
 least of his guests. 
 
 " He won't get the chance," I said, jumping 
 into the shallow water, and cramming the cold 
 nose of the pistol into the ear of the hesitater. 
 " If you don't come before I've counted six, I'll 
 fire." And I began the numbers 
 
 -" Satoo, doowa, tiga, ampat li " 
 
 "Tvan, Tuanf I come!" he yelled, turning 
 yellow beneath his brown. He scrambled into 
 the launch, which was bumping unpleasantly on 
 the sand, and I came after him, wet, but satisfied. 
 The Malay dived into the engine-room, and set 
 the engine going. I took the wheel ; it was neces- 
 sary to get her off this sand-bank as quickly as 
 possible, if we were not to run aground. About 
 Pulu Panas, the tides rise and fall like the water 
 in a lock when the gates are lowered or raised ; 
 ten minutes makes all the difference between safe 
 depth for a small craft and ignominious stranding. 
 
 " Chit-chit ! pitte-pitter-pitter ! " went the 
 engine, and my heart grew suddenly lighter. The 
 shallow emerald water of the reef began streaming 
 past ; two V-shaped lines of foam sprang back- 
 wards from the bow. We were off. 
 
 Cristina sank back upon the cushions of the 
 bright, glass-windowed cabin, with something 
 like a sigh of relief, and I felt that she had realised 
 quite as clearly as I the terrible danger we were 
 in. Whether Mrs. Ash realised it or not I cannot 
 say. I never succeeded in understanding that
 
 214 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 old lady's character. To all outward appearance, 
 she was as cool as if she had been seated in a 
 drawing-room in Sloane Square, instead of in the 
 cabin of a launch that was chasing madly across 
 the far-out seas of Malaysia, in flight from kid- 
 napping and murder. I saw the flash of her 
 needles as I came forward from the engine-room ; 
 she was working steadily on a Cardigan helmet 
 of fleecy wool, the very look of which, in that 
 burning temperature, made me want to sit down 
 and hang my tongue out like a dog. 
 
 Cristina looked pathetically at me as I came in. 
 There was something almost like tears in her eyes. 
 
 " I can't help feeling badly about it," she said, 
 dropping her small hands on her lap, and looking 
 up at me with an expression that would have 
 set a score of lances in rest to avenge and redress 
 her wrongs, in the days when men were not 
 ashamed of their most creditable feelings. 
 
 " About what ? " I said, taking the seat beside 
 her. " The impudence of that beast ? " 
 
 " No. My clothes. Of course he will never 
 send them after us. And there was a lace demi- 
 toilette but you don't understand ' 
 
 " I don't," I said patiently, " but tell me ; I'm 
 sorry for anything that hurts you." 
 
 " You couldn't know. . . . When I tell you that 
 it was a real Doucet model, and looked as if it 
 didn't cost ten-and-sixpence " 
 
 " Is that a virtue ? " I asked, somewhat puzzled. 
 
 " Of course ! " said Cristina, wide-eyed. " It
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 215 
 
 must look as if you made it yourself in a moment 
 of inspiration, out of a window-curtain and a yard 
 of trimming off a hat, and it must incite the 
 other women to try and copy it because it looks 
 so easy, and would suit them just as well as it 
 suits you ; and all the time, it must have taken 
 one man thirty years to learn how to design it, 
 and four women three months to make it, and 
 must have cost sixty-seven What's the use ? 
 It's as good as dead." 
 
 " Cristina," said Mrs. Ash, raising her eyes from 
 the North Sea fisherman's clothing, " I should not 
 be doing my duty if I did not tell you that the 
 taste for finery grows like the taste for drink, and 
 is almost as destructive to the character. I 
 should be sorry to see you give way to it." 
 
 " Drink ? " asked Cristina idly : but the old 
 lady was not to be put off. 
 
 " Either one or the other ; there is not much to 
 choose," she said, and finished the border of the 
 helmet with a flash and a click. 
 
 Cristina yawned politely. 
 
 " I know you mean it well, dear," she said, 
 " but you make me feel so Victorian that I am 
 sure I must be growing side-whisker curls and a 
 crinoline. I've got the proper frame of mind for 
 it, too ; I suppose people must have lived in a 
 continual semi-conscious state of boredom in 
 those days, and I'm feeling frightfully bored now 
 that it's all over and we're safe again. Isn't 
 there something very boring in safety ? "
 
 216 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " You are tempting Providence in saying sucb 
 things," rebuked Mrs. Ash. 
 
 " What a very poor opinion of Providence you 
 must have, dear Ashie ! " was Cristina's reply, 
 and she yawned again delicately, behind her hand. 
 The launch ran on ; we were out from under the 
 lee of the island now, lifting and " scending " to 
 the swell of the open sea. Before us lay the clear 
 ruled line of the horizon, broken only by a faint, 
 far-away blue cloud which the launch driver told 
 us was Wangi, the steamer port of call. 
 
 " It looks very small," I said. " I wonder that 
 the K.P.M. think it worth while calling there." 
 
 Nobody answered. Cristina, worn out by the 
 excitement of the last two days, and by a sleep- 
 less night or so, had sunk gently back on the 
 cushions, and was sleeping. As for Mrs. Ash, 
 she never answered anything that was not couched 
 in the form of a direct question and did not 
 always answer that. She was knitting away, 
 with her eyes so nearly shut that I fancied and 
 still fancy she had dozed off as well as Cristina, 
 and was working in her sleep. 
 
 We ran on steadily, the pale blue island grow- 
 ing nearer and darker by slow degrees. Like 
 Cristina, I had been short of sleep during these 
 recent nights, and the temptation to rest over- 
 came me. It was scarcely wise to sleep at such 
 a time ; I knew it, but I argued with myself that 
 nothing could really happen ; for his own sake, 
 the Malay would drive the launch safely, and there
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 217 
 
 had been, and was, no sign whatever of pursuit. 
 So I placed a cushion under my head, lifted my 
 feet on the lounge, and in twenty seconds had 
 slid joyfully down the glissade of sleep on which 
 my mind had been unwillingly balancing for so 
 long. . . . 
 
 I opened my eyes. The cabin of the launch was 
 full of red sunset. We were rocking steadily, 
 with a new kind of rocking, short and sidewise. 
 Cristina and Mrs. Ash were both unmistakably 
 asleep ; the knitting needles had stopped. And 
 the pulse of the engine was still. 
 
 I reached the engine-room in two jumps. It 
 was empty. The Malay had fled. 
 
 " Gcod God ! " I said, appalled. I came out 
 on deck, and looked all round. The small blue 
 cloud had disappeared ; instead, a green, low 
 island, not a mile long and plainly uninhabited, 
 lay a few hundred yards ahead of the launch. 
 Some ten miles behind us, dimly visible in the 
 sinking light, was a group of islets that I recog- 
 nised as the last outliers of Pulu Panas. Schintz 
 had pointed them out to us a day or two before, 
 and had explained that they were geographically 
 a part of his domains, but actually owned by 
 Malays ; they were eleven or twelve miles away 
 from his great island, scattered in a string out 
 from its farther end. 
 
 The Malay, I guessed, had slipped overboard 
 as we passed the group, and swum to the shore 
 a mile or so, more or less, is nothing to these
 
 218 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 sea-rovers. He had left the launch running, not 
 in the direction of Wangi probably it had never 
 been headed there at all but towards the open 
 sea, with this indefinite green island somewhere 
 on the horizon. I had not been mistaken when 
 I thought it too small for the steamer port of call. 
 
 Doubtless he would find means to tell his 
 master where we had gone ; and if there was 
 another launch at Pulu Panas not at all an un- 
 likely chance we might depend on seeing it out 
 in pursuit before very many hours. Schintz 
 would surely not let us away without a struggle. 
 
 I realised all this in a few minutes, and in no 
 more than a few seconds the horror of it had 
 passed away from my mind, driven out by the 
 cold determination to think of nothing, care for 
 nothing, but safety and escape. It is only so that 
 men find their way out of the " tight places " 
 that are frequent in earth's far-off corners. 
 
 First I overhauled the engine, saw that it had 
 stopped for want of petrol, and that as one 
 would expect the reserve stock had been thrown 
 overboard. The launch could no more be moved 
 from her place than if the engines had been taken 
 out and thrown into the sea. 
 
 " What a fool I was what a fool I was ! " I 
 thought bitterly. " To let myself sleep and yet 
 I never meant it. I intended no more than a 
 few minutes' doze." I looked at my watch. 
 " Lord, I must have slept an hour and a half. I 
 wish I could kick myself why, that Malay devil
 
 ABOUT A PIXK BEAST 
 
 219 
 
 might have sunk the launch if he liked, instead 
 of merely slipping overboard. I suppose he was 
 afraid to harm Cristina. He knew we'd all wake 
 up if he stopped the engine ; he must have planned 
 the whole thing nicely." 
 
 An unpleasant thought struck me. Surely the 
 Malay could not have anticipated leaving the 
 launch to drift very long. His master would cer- 
 tainly take vengeance on him if he endangered 
 Cristina's life. Consequently, pursuit must be 
 near. Consequently, something must be done, 
 and that immediately. 
 
 I left the useless engine-room, went on deck, 
 found that the dinghy was untouched clearly 
 the Malay had feared to awaken us by removing 
 it and that there was a big locker containing tins 
 of food and zinc bottles of water, screwed down 
 to the deck planking. I slung the dinghy loose 
 she was small, smaller than I liked put all the 
 food and water I thought she would carry into 
 her, and turned back to the cabin to get rugs 
 and cushions. I meant to tell Cristina and Mrs. 
 Ash what had happened, as soon as everything 
 was ready, breaking the news as well as I might ; 
 but I found the necessity had been saved me. 
 They were broad awake, and watching me. Mrs. 
 Ash had already collected the rugs and cushions, 
 and made them into the neatest of strapped 
 bundles, which she handed to me with perfect 
 calm, remarking 
 
 " I've had everything except being wrecked on
 
 220 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 a desert island, and I knew that was bound to 
 come. You needn't tell me desert islands aren't 
 damp and dirty. Give me a hand to take up the 
 linoleum on the floor." 
 
 I gave her a hand, and we ripped it, shrieking, 
 from its place. Mrs. Ash rolled it up and tied 
 it, settled her bonnet strings, and briefly remarked 
 " Come on." It was the oddest experience. No 
 one asked questions, no one wanted explana- 
 tions ; the situation seemed to have made itself 
 clear at a glance, and more than that, the possi- 
 bilities that lay behind had made themselves 
 clear also. Cristina said not a word, but she 
 worked as a nigger is supposed to, and does not, 
 putting the parcels into the dinghy and helping 
 me to lower Mrs. Ash comfortably from the deck 
 of the launch. She dropped in after, took a 
 seat and, as I was about to follow, pointed me 
 back to the boat." 
 
 " Sink her," was all she said ; but I understood 
 at once. Our only chance of making ourselves 
 safe or temporarily safe on the island, lay in 
 leading Schintz and his people to suppose that 
 we had either got the launch to go on, or had all 
 been drowned together. 
 
 It was not so easy to sink the boat as one 
 might have thought. I am not experienced in 
 the crime of " barratry," which most people meet 
 with solely on the backs of their steamship tickets ; 
 and I tried ineffectually to upset the launch at 
 first. Now a smallish launch may rock till you
 
 ABOUT A PIXK BEAST 221 
 
 think she is about to stand on her head, in a 
 sea-way ; she may heel horribly when something 
 heavy is put on board ; but when you try to 
 upset the same launch deliberately and of malice 
 aforethought, you will find that she is not a 
 dinghy and does not behave as such. Cristina 
 watched me for a minute dancing ineffectually on 
 the gunwale, with every movable piled in place 
 to help me, and then ordered briefly 
 
 " Open the bilge-cock ! " 
 
 " I beg your pardon ? " 
 
 " I don't know what a bilge-cock is. But it 
 sinks things. Don't you remember Kipling's 
 poem about the man who 
 
 "Ban her or opened the bilge-cock, precisely as he was 
 told." 
 
 That must be the proper way to sink ships ; Kip- 
 ling never makes technical mistakes." 
 
 I found the " bilge-cock " ; I am not sure to 
 this day if that was its name, but it yielded to 
 persuasion and a spanner, and the sea came 
 gushing in with alarming energy. I thought she 
 would have foundered before I got into the 
 dinghy ; but it seemed that I had still a thing or 
 two to learn about the business of scuttling 
 launches. She stayed so long above water that 
 I was afraid I had made a mistake ; it was not till 
 we were almost too far off to note any gradual 
 sinking that she began to grow shallower, inch 
 by inch, she was a mere raft, resting upon the
 
 222 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 water ; and even then she hung for quite a little 
 bit before suddenly and decidedly sticking up 
 her nose, depressing her stern, and plunging out 
 of sight. 
 
 I drew a long sigh of relief. Cristina calmly 
 possessed herself of the two lifebuoys that I had 
 put into the dinghy, and cast them overboard. 
 
 " Let them have something to pick up," she 
 said. I pulled in silence. The island was further 
 off than I had thought ; the sun was sinking fast, 
 and once it was fairly below the horizon, dark 
 would be a matter of a very few minutes. More- 
 over, save that the island appeared to be un- 
 inhabited, I did not know anything at all 
 about it. 
 
 In a green gloom of after-sunset the keel of the 
 dinghy grated on the sand. I had time to help 
 the women out, tumble the goods ashore, and 
 draw the dinghy above high-water mark, before 
 stars leaped out in a velvet sky, and night, like 
 a cool dark hand, dropped on the burning shore 
 and sea. 
 
 " The tide is coming in," remarked Cristina 
 with satisfaction. "Our footmarks will be 
 Ashie dear, please walk in the creepers when you 
 leave the sand ; it's necessary." 
 
 " There may be snakes," stated Mrs. Ash, 
 standing up black, slim, and incredibly civilised- 
 looking, in the pale light of a first-quarter moon. 
 
 " I prefer them," was Cristina' s elliptic but 
 comprehensible answer. " Sit down there and
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 
 
 rest ; we'll give you some tea by-and-by. Mr. 
 Garden and I are going to bury the dinghy." 
 
 " I was just going to suggest something of the 
 kind," I said, I did not want all the honours of 
 the situation to rest with the Kris-Girl, and it 
 was quite true that the necessity of covering up 
 our tracks, in a very literal sense, had already 
 occurred to me. " But it won't be easy to make 
 the sand look as if nothing had been buried." 
 
 " It will be quite easy," said Cristina. In the 
 pale moonlight, I saw her stooping down and lift- 
 ing something with her hands. " We've only got 
 to put aside some of these trails of beach con- 
 volvulus they're fathoms long and put them 
 back when we've done." 
 
 It was managed accordingly. Together Cristina 
 and I dragged the light dinghy up the beach to 
 high-water mark, and buried her in the sand just 
 beyond it, using pieces of driftwood to scrape 
 away the soft sand, and carefully putting back 
 the thick trails of creeper when we had done. 
 The whole thing seemed extraordinarily secret 
 and criminal. I felt as if I had been burying a 
 murdered body. 
 
 " There," said the Kris-Girl, panting, and 
 standing up to brush the sand off her skirt. 
 " That's safe. Now for our camp." 
 
 " In the boys' books which one must take as 
 chief guide," I said, " they tie the sail to four trees. 
 But we haven't a sail, and the trees don't grow 
 separately. There ought to be a cave."
 
 224 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " There ought," agreed Cristina, little knowing 
 what she wished. 
 
 " Since there isn't," I suggested, " let's get into 
 the shelter of the bush with our rugs and pillows, 
 and sleep till daylight." 
 
 Mrs. Ash lifted the edge of her skirt, and shook 
 the heavy dew from it. 
 
 "I knew desert islands were damp," she said, 
 resignedly. " Are we going right into the jungle ? 
 If so, I shall take my umbrella." 
 
 " It won't keep off the dew, dear Ashie," said 
 Cristina. 
 
 " It will keep off tigers, which is more impor- 
 tant." 
 
 " No wild animal, I understand, will face an 
 umbrella opened before it suddenly. If you 
 should observe a tiger, Cristina, I beg you to " 
 
 " My dear lady," I broke in, " there are no 
 tigers on these small islands ; only on the big ones 
 like Java and Sumatra. Probably there won't 
 be anything to annoy you, and it won't even be 
 damp ; we can make our camp behind this big 
 rock on the sand." 
 
 It was a very big rock, a pile of white coral 
 shaped like a gigantic sponge, full of caverns and 
 points and hollows. I saw at once that it was 
 just what we wanted to hide us from boats scout- 
 ing past the beach. We could sleep there till 
 dawn, and then find a safer spot in the interior 
 of the island. As to what was to come next, I 
 was by no means clear in my mind. We had the
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 225 
 
 dinghy ; it would carry us a good way in these 
 quiet seas. I hoped that at the worst we might 
 get to Wangi in it when Schintz's pursuit should 
 have slackened. But I preferred to think there 
 might be a village somewhere on the far side of 
 the island, where one could hire a good seaworthy 
 JVIalay prau for some of the coins stowed away 
 in the sovereign purse on my watch-chain. The 
 Malay is exceedingly covetous, and I did not think 
 that Schintz's rule was likely to extend beyond 
 his own actual serfs. He was not the sort of 
 man to serve for love. 
 
 In the meantime supper and bed were the chief 
 things to be considered. 
 
 The sand behind the great rock sloped into a 
 sort of hollow, where one could be comfortably 
 sheltered from the chill of any land breeze that 
 might come up during the night. The rock itself 
 shut off the sea-wind. We had not only the rugs 
 and cushions from the launch, but also mosquito 
 nets ; no one, in the tropic seas, travels without 
 these necessities, and Schintz was not the man to 
 run the risk of discomfort on his own boat. We 
 had food tinned prawns and peaches, caviare, 
 biscuits, macaroons, and what not ; I had put a 
 couple of pints of champagne among the stores, 
 and Cristina had a vacuum flask full of hot tea. 
 Behind the big rock, under the stars, with the 
 small gold boat of the crescent moon faring slowly 
 up the sky, we camped upon the sand and ate. 
 There was one plate and one fork ; Mrs. Ash 
 15
 
 226 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 had them both, while the Kris-Girl and myself 
 ate with our fingers out of tins. The old lady, 
 eating prawns delicately with her fork, and sitting 
 perfectly upright upon a stone, looked, as usual, 
 like a piece of London dropped accidentally down 
 in Malaysia, and, as usual, made one feel that she 
 was nothing but an optical delusion, bound to 
 vanish if you turned your eyes for a moment to 
 something else. . . . 
 
 I have never seen any human being who so 
 completely possessed the power of detachment 
 from his or her immediate surroundings. I re- 
 member I once suggested to Cristina that Sir Boyle 
 Roche's famous problem of the bird might have 
 been solved had he known Mrs. Ash ; for that 
 lady was always in two places at once London 
 and the Eastern seas. But Cristina would have 
 it that I was wrong. " Ashie is not in two 
 places," she said : " She's in one, and that one 
 isn't here." 
 
 As for me, the sense of place had never been 
 stronger in my mind than it was that night. A 
 wild, unknown island in far Malaysia a coral 
 beach, a dark sea full of stars, strange scents frorn^ 
 the invisible forest drifting on warm whiffs ' of 
 wind, danger, perplexity, fear, not far away ; and 
 at my side, a beautiful girl, alone in the wilderness 
 with 
 
 Well no ; the situation was not, after all, the 
 stock situation of the romantic novel. The outfit 
 of that type of tale does not include an old lady
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 227 
 
 in a beaded cape and a Victorian bonnet, breath- 
 ing hostility upon the leaning palms and the 
 coral shores, in that the one harboured spiders, 
 and the other was not guiltless of crabs ; breath- 
 ing, further, an atmosphere of chaperonage and 
 conventionality. Where are the thrills of such a 
 situation, in face of a Mrs. Ash ? I reflected that 
 I was let in for all the unpleasantnesses of a wreck 
 on a desert island, without any of the usual com- 
 pensations. How was I to display my delicacy 
 and consideration, to avoid pressing my society 
 upon the distressed beauty, with a noble look 
 that should remain in her mind as long as life 
 lasted ; to bow over her little hand and vanish, 
 leaving her to rest alone, yet not unguarded, by 
 the camp fire, while I paced all night in the forest, 
 listening for the slightest sound, and ready to 
 rejoin her instantly at the break of day how, 
 I say, was I to play this star part of the chivalrous 
 hero, with an Early- Victorian chaperon sitting 
 in my pocket ? 
 
 " I'm dashed glad," was my entirely unchivalrous 
 thought. " I can't imagine a more beastly nui- 
 sance all round than the left-alone-on-the-island 
 situation, and I don't know which of us would like 
 it least. Thank God for Mrs. Ash ! " 
 
 And I pressed the old lady to have a little more 
 champagne. 
 
 " Drink to our safe arrival at Wangi," I said. 
 " The other bottle we'll open to celebrate it when 
 we get there."
 
 228 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Thank you, I will," said Mrs. Ash, filling the 
 deep clam shell with which I had provided her. 
 " Cristina has the modern dislike of stimulants, 
 but I was brought up to think that wine was 
 given us to make glad the heart of man, and 
 ladies also, within the limit of two glasses, beyond 
 which indulgence becomes vulgar." 
 
 "But, Ashie dear," said Cristina wickedly, "that 
 clam shell must hold two champagne glasses at 
 the least." 
 
 " The principle is the same," pronounced Mrs. 
 Ash, with the air of one giving forth a moral truth. 
 She drank the champagne, and I am sure it did 
 her good, though there was rather less than half 
 the bottle left for me. 
 
 After supper I cut sticks and slung two mos- 
 quito nets upon them, in the shelter of the sand 
 hollow ; piled cushions and rugs underneath, and 
 left the Kris-Girl and her chaperon to sleep. I 
 was not quite as clear in my mind as I should have 
 liked about that matter of tigers, in spite of 
 what I had said to Mrs. Ash. It came upon me 
 now that I had heard something about tigers 
 swimming the Straits of Sunda . . . and surely 
 most of the islands about there were of no very 
 great size ? Certainly some of them were no 
 bigger than the island on which we had^landed. 
 
 At any rate, I thought it best to camp behind 
 another rock almost inconveniently near, with 
 my automatic under my head. 
 
 That ill-omened sleep of the afternoon cheated
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 229 
 
 me of any deep repose ; I lay long awake, watch- 
 ing the palm-trees sway against the stars after 
 the moon was down ; listening to the talk of 
 the waves on the beach, that grew louder and 
 louder as night went on, more and more like 
 human voices plotting and muttering ; hearing 
 the strange sobs, laughs, tolling and tinklings of 
 night-birds in the forest, and the sharp smack of 
 leaping fish in the lagoon. . . . Oh, a wild, ghostly, 
 lonely spot ; a strange galley, indeed, for the head 
 of the firm of Garden, Whitecross, & Garden, to 
 find himself in, here at the end of the world ! 
 
 " I'd feel safer if we could light on a cave," 
 was my last thought as I went to sleep. ... If I 
 had had ever so little second sight just enough 
 to stretch over twenty-four hours I would have 
 strangled that wish at its birth. 
 
 Dawn woke me up, or the birds I don't know 
 which. They began laughing, bleating, whistling, 
 shrieking, like a ward of lunatics let loose, before 
 ever the grey in the sky had changed to palest 
 gold. There are singing birds in Malaysia, but 
 they are few ; for the most part, those great 
 tropic forests are silent, unless where they ring to 
 the yell of the parrot, the wild cries of beautiful 
 birds that look as though they should sing like 
 angels and don't, or the rude, angry gabble of the 
 monkey. 
 
 There was something just a trifle depressing 
 about the witch's chorus that greeted the day on 
 our desert island. Or else it may have been a
 
 230 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 touch of malaria. In any case, I felt the wind of 
 misfortune blowing near. 
 
 Of course I said nothing about it. I woke 
 Mrs. Ash and Cristina with a cautious hail, and 
 when they had made their toilet, helped them to 
 roll up their beds. Mrs. Ash displayed the linoleum 
 with triumph. 
 
 " As damp as possible underneath," she said. 
 " Dry as a bone above. We should certainly have 
 caught our deaths." 
 
 Cristina said nothing. I think she realised 
 that it was not an affair of linoleums and such 
 trifles. At all events, she shot a keen glance 
 across the lightening sea that told me where her 
 thoughts were. 
 
 " They will look here," she said presently. 
 
 " One can't be certain," I said. " But we'll 
 have to provide for it. We have an hour or two 
 to spare. Even supposing the Malay gets the 
 news to Pulu Panas this morning which would 
 be pretty quick going they couldn't put out 
 another boat till full daylight, on account of the 
 reefs, and no boat in these seas could possibly do 
 the run under three hours at the very least." 
 
 Cristina, standing on the wide white beach that 
 was swept by the wind of dawn, looked out to 
 seaward, and made no answer. 
 
 " Don't you think so ? " I asked. 
 
 She did not answer for a moment, and then 
 
 " I think," she said, " that we had better get 
 under cover this very minute."
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 231 
 
 " You don't see anything ? " I asked, some- 
 what startled. 
 
 " Not with my eyes. But my mind doesn't 
 agree with my eyes this morning. No, don't 
 stop to ask why. I think we had better get back 
 into the scrub." 
 
 She was picking up rugs and pillows as she 
 spoke. I made haste to help her ; I did not un- 
 derstand, but experience, by this time, had given 
 me a thorough respect for the workings of the 
 Kris-Girl's mind, little though I followed them. 
 Mrs. Ash took her full share of the labour. In 
 ten minutes, we had brought all our belongings 
 within the shadow of the bush ; and behold, there 
 was indeed a cave ! 
 
 "This is lucky ! " I exclaimed, looking at the 
 coral rock, dark inside, dazzling white without, and 
 heavily wreathed with creepers. " We can stow 
 our things here, and then cross the island carefully, 
 and see if we can find a village before dusk. It 
 doesn't look inhabited, but one never knows." 
 
 We put away the things the cave, after all, 
 was but small and covered them with trails of 
 vine. You would never have guessed that any- 
 one had disturbed the spot, when we had finished 
 covering up our tracks. I felt rather proud of 
 my scout-craft ; but Mrs. Ash remarked briefly 
 
 " I have no opinion of caves " ; and somehow, 
 I felt my satisfaction dimmed. 
 
 By now the sun had leaped from the sea, and 
 the beach was bathed in pure gold ; a strong
 
 232 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 wind swept out of clean blue distances ; the world 
 came fresh and sharp-edged from the mould of 
 the new day. It seemed hard to leave all this 
 splendour, and bury ourselves in the sinister 
 dark forest ahead, but I felt Cristina's instinct to 
 be right. We were too conspicuous on that 
 bright beach, even though it seemed all but im- 
 possible that there should be any pursuit. So I 
 loaded myself with food for the day, not forgetting 
 a bottle of water, and we plunged into the forest. 
 
 It was incredibly tangled. I had to use my 
 knife which was luckily a large one at every 
 second step, to cut clear of the lianas, bush lawyer 
 vines, and coils of green rattan cane. The women 
 came after me, with full leisure to use their eyes. 
 
 " Why, here's another cave ! " said Cristina 
 in a minute. " And another. And Mr. Garden, 
 this is all caves ! " 
 
 " I have no opinion of caves," repeated Mrs. 
 Ash, stepping along with her black draperies 
 kilted up at exactly the judicious height. " I 
 have no opinion of this place altogether. You 
 may remember, Cristina, that I warned you 
 yesterday against foolish expressions of dis- 
 content with a state of comparative comfort. 
 You see now." 
 
 " It looks almost," said Cristina wickedly, 
 just too low for Mrs. Ash's ageing ears to catch 
 " as if Providence had been tempted after all. 
 How very small of Providence ! " 
 
 At this point she disappeared, exactly as if the
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 233 
 
 earth had opened and swallowed her up. Mrs. 
 Ash gave a cry, and I sprang to the spot where 
 Cristina had vanished. 
 
 Do you know that unpleasant dream in which 
 the earth gives way underneath you, and lets you 
 down a gigantic drop, at the end of which you 
 wake gasping ? In broad daylight, that dream 
 happened to me. The earth gave way, and I 
 went down through a smother of greenery, crash- 
 ing and smashing, snatching at things that gave 
 way and slithered through my hands, until I 
 came to a stop with a heavy bump upon a mass 
 of decayed vegetation. I was half stunned for 
 the moment, and remained where I had fallen, 
 looking stupidly up at the glimpses of sky that 
 appeared through a mesh of leaves and liana some 
 distance above. Cristina's voice brought me to 
 my senses. 
 
 "Would you mind," she said, "taking your 
 boots off my lap ? " 
 
 " I beg your pardon ! " I exclaimed. " Please 
 pardon me I didn't know " 
 
 "But they are still there," said Cristina with 
 a small laugh. I gathered my scattered wits, 
 saw that Cristina and I were together at the 
 bottom of a sort of pit with perpendicular walls, 
 choked and tangled in trails of greenery ; that 
 we were at exceedingly close quarters, and that 
 my feet, undoubtedly, were in her muslin lap. 
 
 " Good gracious ! " I said, removing them. 
 " I hope I haven't hurt you ? "
 
 234 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Not at all. I don't think the fall has hurt 
 me either there was such a heap of stuff at the 
 bottom. I'll stand up and find out." 
 
 We both stood up, and ascertained that scratches 
 and bumps were the worst of our damage.. I 
 called out to reassure Mrs. Ash, and we then began 
 scrambling up the rocky sides of the pit, which 
 had a good many projections hidden among the 
 green. With some difficity, we got out. Mrs. 
 Ash was nowhere to be seen. Cristina called to 
 her. 
 
 " Here," came the answer from somewhere 
 underground. 
 
 " Lord ! " I said, " she's got into one too ! " 
 
 " I think," said Cristina, poising herself on a 
 small, sharp pinnacle half covered with twining 
 leaves, <: that we've got on to the wrong kind of 
 coral island." 
 
 "How do you mean ? " 
 
 " They aren't all green lawns covered with 
 beautiful palms, and picturesque peaks going up 
 to heaven. Once in a way you hit on this. I 
 never saw it, but I've heard of it. I'm afraid we 
 are in for Ashie, dear, are you hurt ? " 
 
 " I am not hurt," came the chaperon's accents 
 from somewhere under our feet, " but I am greatly 
 inconvenienced. I understand that you and Mr. 
 Garden were wishing for caves. I said before, 
 and I repeat, that I have no opinion of them." 
 
 " We didn't raise them by wishing for them," 
 I objected, aside. Mrs. Ash heard me.
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 235 
 
 " I have observed," came her voice, issuing 
 ghostly from the bowels of the earth, " that 
 Providence at times allows rash wishes to bring 
 their own fulfilment, for our I don't wish to 
 hurry you, but there are spiders down here." 
 
 We had a difficult job to get the old lady out ; 
 it was just such a cavern, masked with vines, as 
 Cristina and myself had fallen into, and the sides 
 were almost straight up. At last, however, we 
 stood on safe ground? ready to make another 
 move forward. By this time, we were well 
 within the forest, and without anything to guide 
 us ; but I looked at the compass on my watch- 
 chain, and directed our course forward, towards 
 the far side, where that problematical village and 
 prau might be. 
 
 We had not taken five steps before I put my 
 foot on an apparently sound piece of earth, slightly 
 veiled in creeper, and plunged straight through it 
 into another cavern. This time I knocked myself 
 about a good deal ; I was bleeding from head 
 and knee when I got out, and had to accept Mrs. 
 Ash's first-aid with a couple of handkerchiefs. 
 I could have wished but no matter. We went 
 on cautiously, and for a time had no further 
 accident. By-and-by, however, Mrs. Ash fell off 
 a sharp pinnacle that looked like a solid rock, 
 and turned out to be a mere support for more of 
 those cursed vines. She was just disappearing 
 down a cave, when Cristina and I got hold of her 
 skirts and dragged her back.
 
 236 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 "It's like a nightmare," I said, panting for 
 breath, and trying to balance myself on some- 
 thing like the bristles of a giant hairbrush, repro- 
 duced in stone, and covered with leaves. I 
 failed, and sat down upon the bristles. What I 
 said matters to no one but myself ; it did not 
 get beyond my teeth. 
 
 " We have got to get back to the beach at any 
 cost," I said. "This is impossible." 
 
 I looked at my compass, and behold, it was 
 smashed : the glass had cracked, and the needle 
 was hopelessly bent. 
 
 " We came that way," pronounced Mrs. Ash, 
 pointing. 
 
 One way was as good as another now ; we 
 struggled on, anxious for only one thing in the 
 world to get out of this nightmare tangle of 
 pinnacles, caves, and creepers. Warned by ex- 
 perience, we tested every step with sticks before 
 venturing to set our feet down ; but even so, we 
 managed to score a few more sudden disappear- 
 ances among us. The heat was terrible ; our 
 hands and faces dripped like melting butter, and 
 our clothes clung to us as if we had been dropped 
 in the sea. I don't know how we escaped serious 
 injury from the many falls we had : it may have 
 been the creepers that saved us but at all events, 
 though we all suffered endless scratches and 
 bruises, no bones were broken or sprains inflicted. 
 I think we had forgotten all about Schintz ; it 
 was not till the increasing heat told us mid-day
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 237 
 
 was at hand, and suggested the wisdom of a 
 camp and a meal,. that anyone spoke of the pur- 
 suit. 
 
 I had found, with much difficulty, a place clear 
 enough of spikes and pitfalls to give us room to 
 sit down ; the water bottle had been brought out, 
 biscuits and meat produced, and a sort of rude 
 lunch spread upon a rock. We had rested and 
 fed, and felt refreshed. I found a cluster of wild 
 rose-apples growing near, and offered the fruit 
 for dessert. Cristina was just raising one glossy 
 pink sphere to her lips, when she paused, holding 
 the fruit in air, and appeared to listen. 
 
 " Do j'ou hear anything ? " she said presently. 
 
 I listened for the sound of a launch, but there 
 was nothing audible from the sea, beyond the 
 steady, far-off beat of waves on the shore. Mrs. 
 Ash sat still as a black marble statue on her rocky 
 pedestal, and listened also. Cristina listened ; 
 and of the three, she alone heard anything. I 
 could tell by her face that some sound, unnoticed 
 by Mrs. Ash or myself, had reached her. 
 
 " What is it ? " I asked. For answer, she 
 raised her finger, and laid it on her lips. Again 
 she listened, with an intensity that fixed her eyes 
 to hard, moveless sapphires, and made of her 
 delicate figure a small white statue to match 
 the black one beside her. And now I heard too. 
 
 Someone was coming through the forest, a very 
 long way off. One could not have heard him, or 
 them, but for the extraordinary conformation of
 
 238 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 the island ; no one (I thought) could make pro- 
 gress noiselessly through that network of rocky 
 pitfalls and spider-webs of greenery. For all 
 that, the newcomer was a better traveller than we 
 were ; he dropped at times with a smashing sound 
 into some vine-covered pit, or stumbled on some 
 one of the million hidden pinnacles, but he came 
 steadily on. Even as we listened, the sound grew 
 clearer. 
 
 Mrs. Ash turned to the girl. 
 
 " Cristina ! " she whispered, appealingly ; and 
 I saw that the old lady's face had turned very 
 pale. Out of a hundred difficulties and tight 
 places, the Kris-Girl had cut her way ; surely she 
 could find a road to safety, in this last extremity ! 
 This was the silent speech of Mrs. Ash's face. 
 
 I don't know what Cristina was going to do ; 
 I did not wait to see. Whether she saw any 
 loophole of escape or not, I had no intention 
 whatever of leaving the defence of our party, in 
 design or in carrying out, to a woman. 
 
 As well as if I had seen him, I knew and we 
 all knew that Schintz and his men were on that 
 island ; were hunting for us ; were likely enough 
 to find us. This was my business. 
 
 " Cristina," I whispered it was only long after 
 that I remembered I had used her name " We 
 must pick up every scrap of this stuff " point- 
 ing to the food and debris of food, upon the rock 
 " and we must get down at once into the nearest 
 big cave. There are thousands of them on this
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 239 
 
 island, and it's impossible to hunt them through 
 before dark. This one " I drew the vines aside 
 from the opening of a deep cavern-pit beside us 
 " is as good as any other ; it seems large. If 
 we pull back the creepers as we go down, no 
 one could see us ; and we're safe for another 
 night at least. That'll give us time to turn round. 
 Now." 
 
 We had been rapidly clearing as I spoke ; all 
 scraps and fragments were removed, and the 
 remainder of the food and water I now dropped 
 cautiously down the cleft. Moving with the 
 utmost care, I helped Mrs. Ash down first, then 
 gave my hand to Cristina, and then dropped 
 down myself, pulling the clustered vines back as 
 I did so. 
 
 We found ourselves, after a sharp scramble, at 
 the foot of a pit in the coral rock, some twenty 
 feet deep. To my delight, it ran backwards below 
 ground, and we were able to creep into a sub- 
 sidiary cave, entirely hidden from above. It was 
 much cooler here than in the forest ; and there 
 was something very like relief in the liberty to 
 lie back and rest, and cease from the nightmare 
 scrambling and struggling among hidden pit- 
 falls. Mrs. Ash, helped by Cristina and myself, 
 had stood the exertion wonderfully ; but I feared 
 she would not endure much more of it. She 
 lay up against the rock, after carefully testing it 
 for damp, and closed her eyes ; I thought she 
 slept .
 
 240 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 The day wore on ; we could gauge the passing 
 of the hours by the gradual slant of the sunrays 
 that found their way down between the leaves. 
 It smelt warm and ferny dow r n there ; it was very 
 still, and by some lucky chance, there were no 
 mosquitoes. At first, Cristina and I listened for 
 further sounds of pursuit it was strange how 
 completely convinced we were that Schintz had 
 found and tracked us : I can't even now recall on 
 what evidence we based the belief, but we seemed 
 to entertain no doubt whatever. After a while 
 the faint sounds of crackling, trampling, plunging 
 about, died away altogether, and for a long time 
 we heard nothing. The stillness, the pleasant 
 warmth, the exertion we had been undergoing, 
 combined to lull us both into a half -dreaming 
 state ; as for Mrs. Ash, she had been sleeping the 
 sleep of utter exhaustion for some hours. 
 
 More and more, the green light above grew like 
 the light of sun on the green sea ; the rustle of the 
 leaves overhead sounded like foam upon sand ; 
 the faint breath of air that crept from the back 
 of the cavern made me think of the cool wind that 
 streams from the bow of a moving vessel. . . . 
 The launch was running fast ; I had found that 
 petrol after all. How green the water was ! we 
 must be over a ... Why, the launch had stopped ; 
 that Malay must have scuttled her and jumped 
 overboard to save himself from drowning. No, 
 there he was, clinging on to the gunwale and 
 staring at me two of him three !
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 241 
 
 I was broad awake now. I knew that I was 
 lying at the bottom of a cave on an unknown 
 island, with Cristina and Mrs. Ash ; and that 
 three Malay faces, dark, evil, fiery-eyed, were 
 staring down through the green vines above. 
 
 I touched Cristina's hand I did not dare to 
 turn and the slightest possible pressure told me 
 that she was on guard. We hardly dared to 
 breathe ; speech was impossible, but she took my 
 fingers in hers, and tapped out a word or two 
 in the Morse code 
 " They can't see us." 
 
 I thought indeed that they could not ; but I 
 should have been glad to be quite sure. What 
 were they looking down the hole for ? 
 
 The three faces vanished, and then I felt Cris- 
 tina's hand close fast on mine. Another face, 
 round, pink, pale-eyed, and evil, had taken their 
 place Schintz ! 
 
 My hand closed fast on the pistol. In that 
 moment, I was more than half inclined to aim at 
 the gap among the trailing vine-leaves and rid 
 the world for ever of the Pink Beast and all his 
 ways. His men were doubtless armed, but it was 
 unlikely that they would fight if he were killed. 
 And that he intended mischief to all of us, I did 
 not doubt for a moment. 
 
 I still think that I should have done an entirely 
 
 excusable thing, if I had pressed that trigger. 
 
 But it takes long for a peaceable Englishman to 
 
 train his hand to killing in cold blood. And the 
 
 16
 
 242 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 man had actually done nothing ; it was all sus- 
 picion. . . . 
 
 Cristina read my mind ; she shook her head 
 determinedly, and made " No no ! " with her 
 mouth. She pointed to the inner part of the 
 cave ; I could not conceive what she meant, but 
 I was content to wait. It was barely possible 
 that we had escaped observation, but it was 
 possible. Looking down into the coral pit, they 
 had seen it plainly enough to be sure that there 
 was no one there. And no one standing in the 
 brighter light above, could distinguish the inner 
 cave ; we had not seen it ourselves till we were 
 right upon it. Schintz, sharp as he was, cleverly 
 as he had tracked us up to that point, silently 
 as he had stolen on us at last, was fooled. He 
 thought we had left the pit. 
 
 We heard him tell his men as much. 
 
 " They have been here," he said cautiously; 
 " but they have gone again. Scatter over the 
 forest, and do not dare to leave it. They will 
 have to come out at last. This is a hell's pit of 
 a place ; what possessed you to leave them so 
 near it ? " 
 
 " Tuan," said the voice of the launch-driver, 
 " I did not mean to ; the currents must have 
 carried them much further than I thought. And 
 you will remember, Tuan, I had to slip off when 
 I saw the prau coming, or else I should have 
 been many hours later in getting to you." 
 
 " You were late enough," said Schintz, in a
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 243 
 
 grating voice. They were speaking in Malay, but 
 I understood them fairly well. "If it had not 
 been that the gunboat came along, and gave me 
 the passage to reach my dying native wife on 
 this island ah-ha-ha ! we should not have got 
 here till to-morrow. Any more lateness of that 
 kind, and you will have a finger the less, like 
 that lazy brother of yours. Pigi! get on ! " 
 
 They moved away. I was horrified to observe 
 that they went through the bush as silently as 
 tigers. That crashing and smashing in the 
 earlier part of the day must have been meant to 
 start us into flight. It was well indeed that we 
 had not tried escape. 
 
 I drew a long breath when they were really 
 gone, but I did not dare to move for quite a 
 while. It was Cristina who made the first move. 
 She crept nearer to me, and whispered 
 
 " Do you feel the draught through the cave ? 
 There is a passage there. Do you know, this sort 
 of island very often communicates with the sea 
 through some of its caves they are all originally 
 marine. We might have a chance." 
 
 " I'll go back and look," I said. Somehow, the 
 mention of the gunboat that Schintz had fooled 
 into taking him here, gave me fresh hope. It 
 was doubtless a Dutch vessel, but one could always 
 depend on a man-of-war for help out of a tight 
 place, and she might not have gone on. ... 
 
 But would Schintz have started his hunt if she 
 had not ?
 
 244 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 The ray of hope faded. 
 
 There remained the chance of the cave itself ; 
 and I was more delighted than I can say, when I 
 found that this ray was not to fail me. Back 
 and back, after one preliminary turn, ran the 
 passage ; narrow, rough, wet, and full of holes 
 and pitfalls, but undoubtedly leading somewhere. 
 
 Hope now began to dawn full-orbed. We 
 waked Mrs. Ash she seemed much rested, and 
 quite ready to go on and cautiously, for fear of 
 pitfalls and for fear of making noise, we made 
 our way through the passages of the branching 
 coral cave. It had all been under the sea some 
 thousands of years ago, and only on the surface 
 had the mass of coral, that was the island, acquired 
 any likeness to ordinary land. Down among the 
 caves and vent-holes below, it was like wandering 
 among the halls of Neptune, abandoned for a 
 day by the ocean king and the element in which 
 he ruled. One could not help fearing vaguely 
 that the tide would come in that tide which had 
 flowed out in the ages before the dawn of human 
 life, and never come back again. It was not 
 altogether dark, for the cave system communi- 
 cated with the upper air by many chinks and 
 splits in the coral rock, and as our eyes became 
 accustomed to the gloom, we were able to make 
 our way much better than on the surface. Down 
 here, the seas of long ago had smoothed and 
 made ready the road for us. 
 
 My fear was that we should encounter Schintz
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 245 
 
 and his Malays at some of these breathing holes ; 
 but they must have been almost indistinguish- 
 able from above, and I judged from what he said 
 that he had never been on the island before, and 
 did not know of the caves. We kept hard on, 
 Mrs. Ash supported by my arm, Cristina walking 
 without help, as lightly as if she had never heard 
 the word fatigue. In an hour or so, the light 
 began to broaden ; we were coming to some 
 large opening. At the same time, the sound of 
 waves reached our ears. 
 
 I called a halt. We were clearly near the shore 
 now, and must emerge into the daylight some- 
 where on the beach. My plan was to lead the 
 way out cautiously, look for Schintz and his men 
 before I allowed the women to come out, and if 
 the enemy appeared, fire without hesitation. We 
 were in a better position for defence now, and I 
 had no doubt at all that Schintz would rush us, 
 and give me an honest excuse for putting him 
 out of the way. 
 
 I explained my plan to the two women, stand- 
 ing close to them, and speaking loxv. I remember, 
 as if it were this morning, the pale, growing light 
 in the cave ; the old-ivory look of the rocks, 
 dotted sparsely with ferns that had somehow 
 strayed down from above ; the wet, warm smell of 
 the place, the cool and determined look of Cris- 
 tina's little bright face. Mrs. Ash, as ever, had 
 no expression at all. 
 
 J had not quite finished speaking, when the
 
 246 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 air was split with a wild shriek from above a 
 shriek that ran on and on far beyond the limits 
 of any human voice. At first I had really taken 
 it for a cry from some one of Schintz's party, but 
 in a moment I knew what it was, and I seized 
 Mrs. Ash and the Kris-Girl by the hands, crying 
 " Hurry, hurry ! " 
 
 We were out of the cave, and on the open 
 beach in two minutes ; the fresh sea-wind was 
 blowing in our faces, and right before us, just 
 getting under way, there lay off the reef a long, 
 grey, armoured steamer, flying the Dutch naval 
 
 We hailed her with all the force of our lungs. 
 She did not hear ; she began to turn out. We 
 were small, whitish figures against the whitish 
 rocks ; a cold fear struck my heart. Would she 
 not 
 
 " Look the other way, please," came an order 
 from Mrs. Ash. There was a brief rustling pause, 
 and then 
 
 I don't know how she could have endured a red 
 flannel petticoat in the tropics ; she says it saved 
 her life at least a dozen times in damp places. It 
 certainly saved ours in a tight place, that day. 
 For the gunboat, which had been waiting for the 
 tide, saw it, and turned round. 
 
 And in twenty minutes we were on board. 
 
 The adventure was over. 
 
 You will want to know when and how we told
 
 ABOUT A PINK BEAST 247 
 
 our tale to the officer of the gunboat, and what 
 was done to the Pink Beast. My answer is 
 Never, and nothing. 
 
 The Dutch colonies are not England ; people 
 there are more than a little suspicious of foreigners, 
 and our tale, however told, would have sounded 
 very thin. Schintz, no matter what his inten- 
 tions had been, had actually done nothing. The 
 only person who had done anything was myself ; 
 and I had stolen and sunk his launch. It might 
 have been difficult to explain in a thoroughly 
 convincing manner. . . . 
 
 The gunboat received us as a band of distressed 
 foreigners, left stranded by the sinking of the 
 launch they had obtained to go to Wangi. They 
 very kindly took us on to that port, which, with 
 man-o'-war speed to help us, we reached in less 
 than three hours. And there, so far as they were 
 concerned, the matter ended. I don't think 
 Schintz had known they were still hanging about 
 the island waiting for the tide, or he would never 
 have risked hunting us up. No doubt the siren 
 of the gunboat, which brought us out on the 
 shore, scared him away. At any rate, that is all 
 of Schintz. 
 
 That night, on the deck of a rough little steamer 
 bound from Wangi to Thursday Island, we had 
 time to talk at last ; and first in the subject of 
 our talk was the recent exercise of Cristina's 
 curious powers. 
 
 " It depresses me," she said. " I feel my little
 
 248 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 powers, such as they are, must be going. I count 
 that affair a failure." 
 
 " But I don't see how " 
 
 " Oh yes, it was ; only accident saved you. 
 I should have known. How I could have been 
 
 so Why, I knew all about those things ; 
 
 how they are found on just such reefs ; how they 
 live for years in one cave or pool ; how they need 
 food, ever so much food, and like it high, if it isn't 
 alive. . . . And I never guessed, till just that 
 last minute." 
 
 " I don't see how you could have," I said. 
 
 " Of course you don't," she answered, with a 
 flash of amusement. " If you could but that 
 isn't your job, Mr. what was it he called you ? 
 Guardian." 
 
 I think any man who has been in like case can 
 guess what I said next. 
 
 " No, no, no," said Cristina, bending over the 
 rail, with her face in her hands and for the 
 second time that day, she seemed to be crying 
 Cristina, who feared nothing. " It isn't possible. 
 If it were " 
 
 " If it were ? " I echoed eagerly ; but she only 
 lifted her head and her hands from the rail, and 
 went down into the tiny cabin. 
 
 And the night-wind blew up, as we rolled on 
 our way to Australia.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MEEMAID JANE 
 
 " WHEN you get to Australia, you think you are 
 there, and then you find out you aren't after 
 all," was Mrs. Ash's criticism on Torrestown. It 
 is undeniably true that Australia, approached 
 from the back door by way of Malaysia, is not 
 the country known to the orthodox traveller 
 along P. and 0. routes. To me, however, it 
 seemed likely to prove more interesting. Torres- 
 town dusty, sandy, glaring, with hot salt-windy 
 streets, mangoes and paw-paws growing in its 
 back yards, goats sleeping on the footpath of its 
 principal boulevard, and wild-looking, bearded 
 Australian blacks riding about the suburbs on 
 half -tamed horses, had certainly more local colour 
 about it than Sydney or Melbourne ; or so I 
 imagined, not having seen the last. Mrs. Ash 
 had seen both cities, after her own fashion ; that 
 is, she had journeyed conscientiously with Cristina 
 through all the tourist sights, reading her garden- 
 ing papers, and knitting North Sea fishermen's 
 waistcoats, through the Blue Mountains and the 
 149
 
 250 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Jeno'an Caves, sailing and steaming, woodenly 
 unresponsive, among the world-famous splendours 
 of Sydney Harbour. ... I think, nevertheless, 
 she regretted Sydney and Melbourne, here in the 
 wilds of tropical Northern Australia. The house- 
 wife who can make a successful fight against the 
 dust of Queensland and the Northern Territory 
 has yet to be born. 
 
 It was a matter of silent agreement that I 
 should continue to journey with the party, and, 
 in any case, Torrestown has few calling steamers. 
 We refitted as best we could from the local shops, 
 found quarters in an hotel that looked as if it had 
 not seen a broom since it was built, and settled 
 down to wait for the next Sydney boat. Torres- 
 town does a good deal of pearling, though not as 
 much as Thursday Island or Broome, and we had 
 a pleasant week or so at least Cristina and I 
 had going out with the fleet and seeing the 
 pearlshell fishery. Mrs. Ash's comment on that 
 industry was characteristic. 
 
 " I thought there couldn't be anything in the 
 world dirtier than Malaysia," she said. " But 
 there's one clean thing in Malaysia, and that's 
 the Dutch. There isn't one clean thing of any 
 sort in Torrestown, and pearling is the dirtiest 
 and most disgusting job from Spitzbergen to King 
 Edward Land." 
 
 Nevertheless she continued to earn her salary, 
 shedding the respectability that accompanied her 
 three nodding black plumes over things and places
 
 MERMAID JANE 251 
 
 that assuredly had never been so honoured before. 
 Torrestown, like most places of tropical Australia, 
 has a rather large proportion of scamps and ne'er- 
 do-wells of both sexes among its population ; it 
 drinks more than a little, and Mrs. Grundy holds 
 the reins of propriety with an uncertain hand. 
 Yet the people of Torrestown are kind-hearted in 
 the main, generous to their own destruction, 
 impulsively good-natured on the whole, if impul- 
 sively bad-natured now and then. They partake 
 of the nature of their own violent climate and 
 burning skies ; if you offend a man of Torrestown, 
 he is your enemy till death ; if you are his friend, 
 he will stay beside you and die of thirst with you 
 in the wilderness, or jump in among the man- 
 eating sharks to pull you out on a thousand-to- 
 one chance for his life and yours. . . . There are 
 worse people in the world than the specked and 
 spotted folk of Torrestown. We had not been 
 there more than a few days when Cristina came 
 up to me under the verandah of the biggest pearl 
 store, where (I must admit) I was silently pricing 
 rings, and comparing them with the size of a 
 certain gold Chinese ring for which I had no 
 liking. 
 
 " What do you think ? " said the Kris-Girl, 
 twirling her white umbrella round and round above 
 her wide shade hat. " They're at it again here ! " 
 
 By this time, I had learned Cristina's elliptic 
 form of language, enough of it, at least, to under- 
 stand her as a rule.
 
 252 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " They are, are they ? " I said. " And what 
 is the knot they want you to cut now ? " 
 
 " Rather a curious one," answered Cristina. 
 " Walk on, and we'll talk about it." 
 
 I left the pearl half-hoops behind, and saun- 
 tered side by side with her along the dry, sandy 
 main street of the town. They build, in these 
 remote places, with a liberal sense of the future 
 a future that does not always arrive. It had 
 not arrived for Torrestown, but the preparations 
 remained ; streets so wide that it was quite a 
 little walk across ; great spaces full of nothing 
 but dust and sun and shining tin cans, waiting 
 to be covered with Government offices and lofty 
 warehouses, that assuredly no one would ever 
 build ; fine compounds about the houses, running 
 back to jungle as fast as they could. Four o'clock 
 was the hour ; usually a stirring time in tropical 
 cities but the population of the main street con- 
 sisted, on that afternoon, of nine goats, two 
 hobbled horses, an aboriginal, and a hospital 
 nurse out for a walk. 
 
 We sauntered aimlessly along, talking. Every- 
 one is aimless in Torrestown ; everyone talks . . . 
 
 " It was at church yesterday Sunday," ex- 
 plained Cristina. " You didn't go, so you didn't 
 see. When Ashie and I were coming out, a queer 
 little man stepped forward from the road, and 
 introduced himself to me. He said he was Belle- 
 ville Hobbs, and that he followed the profession 
 of mule-driver for Torrestown and the surrounding
 
 MERMAID JANE 253 
 
 country." Cristina exploded slightly ; it seemed 
 that Belleville Hobbs had made an impression. 
 " He said he had been deputed by some of the 
 other people of Torrestown to address me, be- 
 cause his profession was one that made a man 
 fluent in his speech." 
 
 It was I who exploded now. 
 
 " Be quiet," ordered Cristina, " or I can't go 
 on without laughing myself. Mr. Belleville Hobbs 
 told me that they had heard of my salubrity, 
 and were anxious to take advantage of it, con- 
 comitantly with my unexpected visit to Torres- 
 town. He said things were being stolen " 
 
 " I hope you told him you weren't a police 
 detective," I said rather indignantly, for I was 
 jealous of thfese public claims on the undoubted 
 gifts of my Kris-Girl. 
 
 " I didn't tell him anything ; it isn't so easy 
 to stem the torrent of Mr. Bellville Hobbs' elo- 
 quence remember all the practice he has on the 
 mules ! He said that nothing of any value was 
 going, but small things were being taken from 
 almost every house, half loaves of stale bread, 
 pieces of cotton, knives, a tomahawk or two, fish- 
 lines, and so on. He said it wasn't an aboriginal, 
 because books had been taken from time to time, 
 and it wasn't a common thief, because money 
 was always left. They had sat up and watched 
 night after night, but whatever house was watched 
 was always the one to be let alone, and they 
 couldn't watch the whole town. And of course,
 
 254 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 in such a climate as this, there can be no question 
 of shutting your house up. Nobody minded the 
 small things that went, he said, but the ' im- 
 permeability of the whole matter ' had got on the 
 public mind, and people were even beginning to 
 say that there was something supernatural about 
 it ; or, as Mr. Belleville Hobbs put it, ' that the 
 whole thing was not dictated by any being of a 
 contemporaneous kind.' ' 
 
 " What do you think about it ? " I asked. 
 
 " You know I never think about things of this 
 kind," said Cristina, as if repelling an offensive 
 insinuation. " One asks oneself a question or 
 two " 
 
 " Whom does it benefit ? " I quoted. 
 
 " You're learning," said the Kris-Girl. " You've 
 got as far as the point where the police begin 
 and end. Yes, one asks that. And if there is no 
 answer, you shut your think, and open your 
 take-in, and just let things run along. You have 
 to be careful not to think ; it seems to shut the 
 take-in door. And through that door when you 
 swing it wide open, come lots and lots of things, 
 some of them no use, and some of them useful. 
 And something in you stretches out a hand to 
 the useful ones, and says ' 
 
 " Do you want your tea or do you not ? " It 
 was Mrs. Ash. She had dropped behind for a 
 minute or two, after a praiseworthy fashion she 
 had acquired of late ; but one was never left very 
 long without her.
 
 MERMAID JANE 255 
 
 " I know you do, dear Ashie, and well go and 
 get it at once," replied Cristina patiently, the 
 curious light dying out of her face, and leaving 
 her just an ordinary pretty girl in an ordinary 
 Torrestown muslin frock. As for me, I lifted my 
 hat and swung off by myself, mentally cursing 
 Mrs. Ash's anxiety to earn her salary. . . . 
 
 I wanted Cristina to come for a stroll in the 
 moonlight after dinner, but she could not be 
 moved from the drawing-room of the hotel, where, 
 among the awful relics of mid- Victorian furniture 
 that one finds cast away on the shores of these 
 desolate up-country hotels, she was sitting on a 
 sofa surrounded by newspapers. A table drawn 
 up before her was full of newspapers also, and 
 there were more on the floor. 
 
 " Thank you, I want to read," was all the reply 
 I could get. I took up some of the papers at 
 random. Torrestown Weekly Courier, Torrestown 
 Weekly Courier, Torrestown Saturday Times, Torres- 
 town Saturday Times, was what I read. Cristina 
 was going through back numbers of the local 
 press. 
 
 " But, Miss Raye," I said, "this thing is com- 
 paratively new ; it has only been happening during 
 the last few weeks, so far as I can gather. What 
 is the good of going over all those old papers ? " 
 
 Cristina flapped her handkerchief at me as if I 
 had been an intrusive chicken. 
 
 " Shoo ! " she said. 
 
 I shoo'ed. I went out into the immense, deso-
 
 256 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 late main street of Torrestown under a moon of 
 impossible silver brilliancy, and wandered up and 
 down among the goats and tin cans, waiting till 
 it should be time for bed. There were a few 
 unhappy-looking coconut palms near the jetty ; 
 they leaned and shook in the wind that blew up 
 from the Timor Sea. A sudden sense of the map 
 of Australia came into my mind, and I saw Torres- 
 town, cast away as it were on the endless, desert, 
 northern coast of this far-away continent. Where 
 was the multitudinous brilliant East we had left 
 but a day or two behind us ? I think no traveller 
 with a mind above the level of the beasts that 
 perish could cross the mysterious sea-frontier of 
 Wallace's line, without marvelling over many 
 things he cannot understand. . . . 
 
 Mr. Belleville Hobbs, alone in the desert street, 
 went past me at five minutes after eleven o'clock 
 closing time, with a determinedly steady step. I 
 knew him at once ; there was something in the 
 very cock of his cabbage-tree hat and the lines of 
 his loose-belted shirt, that advertised his " pro- 
 fession," even if one had not noted the spurred 
 feet, looking oddly small in their high-heeled 
 rough-rider's boots. 
 
 He was not entirely sober. He jerked his head 
 at me as he went by, with an odd sort of defiance, 
 and asked 
 
 " Are you her bloke ? " 
 
 Without waiting for an answer, he went on. 
 I found myself wondering at the number and
 
 MERMAID JANE 257 
 
 variety of Cristina's victims ; and then that 
 wonderment died away in another 
 
 Was I her " bloke " ? 
 
 The wind the lonely wind of North Australia, 
 halloeing among the palms beside the Timor Sea, 
 had no reply for me. 
 
 Cristina hired a sloop next day an unpleasant 
 vessel with a cockpit cabin, and one leg like a 
 grasshopper's. I believe that this is not the 
 correct definition, but I can only describe the 
 Colonel Burns (such was her inappropriate name) 
 as she appeared to me. We spent a not very 
 happy morning in her ; I do not enjoy the motion 
 of small sailing boats, and Mrs. Ash, though un- 
 affected by sea-sickness, as apparently by all 
 other weaknesses of humanity, did not seem to 
 think that the owner and skipper was giving value 
 for his employer's money. 
 
 " Don't tell me he can't go straighter than that 
 if he likes," she said bitterly, as we tacked and 
 tacked against the " trades," on our way to a little 
 island that Cristina had some fancy to visit. "You 
 may say what you like about slants and boards ; 
 I only ask you, are you paying by the hour, or 
 are you not ? You are ? Then don't talk to me." 
 
 We visited quite a lot of small coral islands 
 before lunch time, having started early from the 
 hotel. Torrestown, like most North Australian 
 settlements, has a perfect constellation of these 
 wonderful sea-gems at her very gates. 
 17
 
 258 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 Each was more or less like the last, and yet 
 each seemed lovelier than its fellows. The soft, 
 sloping beaches of sand that looked like powdered 
 sugar ; the little green lawns (" those Paul and 
 Virginia sort of places," as Cristina called them) 
 running right down to the water's edge, between 
 high walls of leafage the bare-branched flame 
 trees alight with vermilion flowers, the long, long 
 fingers of convolvulus reaching out to the water 
 across the sand these were the same in every 
 island. But some were round and solid like 
 plates, and others held an aquamarine-coloured 
 lagoon in the centre, much bigger than the slender 
 wreath of island that surrounded it these were 
 "atolls," Cristina said, and her favourites; while 
 others yet were set in surrounding moats of won- 
 derful pale green water, breaking sharply off into 
 the Prussian blue of the outer sea. 
 
 There was a wonderful, haunting fascination 
 about them all about their leaning ivory- 
 stemmed palms, dropping colossal nuts from their 
 far-up crowns ; "about the unexpected fairy glades, 
 sown with strange flowers, that we found hidden 
 in the arms of tangled forests ; about the dead- 
 white sands, unmarked by any foot save our own, 
 where yellow wild oranges, pandanus fruit, lay 
 undisturbed on the wide, wave-pencilled floor. . . . 
 
 .... In the pullulating human ant-hill called 
 Malaysia, what does one know of the charm of 
 island life ? One must cross Wallace's sea-frontier 
 to feel it. At least, that was how it seemed to
 
 MERMAID JANE 259 
 
 me, Robert Garden, senior partner in the firm of 
 Garden, Whitecross, & Garden, wandering here in 
 the East beyond the East, where I had no con- 
 ceivable right to be. 
 
 Cristina seemed to be getting slightly dispirited 
 by the time that half the morning had worn 
 away. I did not in the least know what she 
 might be about, but whatever it was, it was not 
 prospering. We went over island after island, 
 Mrs.' Ash tramping with us determinedly, her 
 impassive face regarding, with equal absenc o of 
 interest, atoll, lagoon, green lawn, and leaning 
 palm. We stopped at last on the beach of the 
 last and bigge*st island, which lay some four miles 
 from Torrestown. We had inspected the place, 
 had circled the edges of the dense thicket of 
 hibiscus, cottonwood, wild fig and other trees, 
 that filled the middle of the island ; had looked 
 at and admired the hundred-foot limestone crag 
 that stood up like a spire above the green deeps 
 of the lagoon ; had tramped along the shore at 
 high-water mark, looking for heaven knows 
 what. . . . Cristina gave up at last, declared 
 herself tired, and sat plump down on the sand. 
 Mrs. Ash, as in duty bound, told her she would 
 " take her death," and, finding her warning use- 
 less, began to pace back and forwards upon the 
 beach, awaiting Cristina's pleasure to go. 
 
 I shared in the Kris-Girl's disappointment 
 though I did not know what it was about and 
 further, I had certain worries of my own which
 
 260 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 kept me from being uproariously cheerful at any 
 time. So I stood near her, looking out at the 
 blinding green of the lagoon and blinding blue 
 of the outer sea, listening to the dry patter of 
 the palm-leaves as the south-east trade shook their 
 plumes, and thinking that there was, after all, 
 something hard and heartless in these places of 
 eternal summer. . . . 
 
 .... On this, Cristina burst out laughing, and 
 I looked to see what the matter might be. The 
 reader may believe me or not, but it is true that 
 that housewifely person, Mrs. Ash, was tidying 
 up the island tidying up Michaelmas Island, the 
 biggest of the Dampier group, off Torrestown, in 
 the Timor Sea. She was walking down the 
 strand, a good way off, pushing loose palm-leaves 
 and streaks of weed away from the ivory smooth- 
 ness of the low-water beach, into the slowly 
 retreating ripples. I do not think the good lady 
 knew what she was about ; doubtless her mind 
 was far away in Kensington and the parks of 
 smoky London, leaving her body to act mechani- 
 cally after its accustomed way. 
 
 " Look ! " said Cristina naughtily, " the dear 
 thing is setting out to sweep the Timor Sea." 
 
 " It sounds like a pirate," I said rather weakly, 
 and then was conscious that I was speaking to my- 
 self alone. The Kris-Girl had suddenly risen and, 
 with that wonderful light speed of hers, was running 
 down the beach. I saw her pounce on something, 
 just before Mrs. Ash swept it into the sea.
 
 MERMAID JANE 261 
 
 " You builded better than you knew, dear 
 chaperon," I heard her say (naturally, I had fol- 
 lowed her). 
 
 Some women would have asked for an explana- 
 tion. Mrs. Ash's fine contempt for what she did 
 not understand never failed her. 
 
 " I suppose you will order the man to sail us 
 back, some time or other," she said. " You 
 may not have noticed it, but they have a very 
 inferior system of warming up food in that 
 hotel." 
 
 Cristina made no answer ; she was fingering 
 what she had picked up. It did not look very 
 interesting a sort of toy raft, two or three feet 
 long, apparently made by some child out of the 
 kind of material handy in the neighbourhood of 
 Torrestown light corky wood, lashed together 
 with strips of fibrous bark, and pointed fore and 
 aft. A long, bark cord trailed from what seemed 
 to be the forward end. 
 
 " I suppose that's some kid's toy that has 
 drifted over from the town," was my remark. 
 Cristina's face took on a mischievous sparkle. 
 
 " I congratulate you," she said. " It looks like 
 that, doesn't it ? " 
 
 " It couldn't be anything else," I said, en- 
 couraged. " You see, a raft of that size could not 
 support more than about ten pounds weight I 
 know a little about displacements," I explained 
 apologetically. " We have so much shipping 
 business of one kind and another. So you see, it
 
 262 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 must be a toy, and Torrestown is the place it must 
 have come from." 
 
 " But what," asked Cristina, " if Mrs. Ash found 
 it above high-water mark, as she did she was 
 sweeping away a bunch of dried palm-leaves, just 
 there, and the raft was under it ; wasn't it, dear ? " 
 
 " It was ; they charge a minimum of two and 
 sixpence for meals out of hours," replied Mrs. 
 Ash, without a break. 
 
 " Well, then," I answered, briskly, " it looks as 
 if there had been a picnic here." 
 
 " Congratulations again. There has been, and 
 perhaps there is," said Cristina. 
 
 " A picnic, now ? " 
 
 " Will you come and take another walk round 
 that wood in the middle of the island ? " was 
 Cristina's reply. 
 
 Mrs. Ash, with a God-give-me-patience expres- 
 sion, placed the raft on a sloping bank of sand 
 and sat down upon it. Cristina and I went off, 
 the Kris-Girl looking particularly bright, and 
 myself (I must confess) feeling a little puzzled. 
 We began to circle the wood, but we had not gone 
 more than a third round it before we heard steps 
 soft steps upon the sand behind us. 
 
 "I never saw an old lady with such a con- 
 founded conscience," I exclaimed, feeling a little 
 sore at the constant shadowing. 
 
 " Oh, yes, you did," replied Cristina, " I will 
 bet you a a sack of gum damar " (I know I 
 blushed at this), " that that isn't Mrs. Ash at all."
 
 MERMAID JANE 263 
 
 " But who could it " I swung round, and 
 
 looked behind me. Cristina turned after the 
 deliberate fashion of one who knows what he is 
 going to see. 
 
 " It's the picnic," she said, with a single glance. 
 
 It was a young man. A smallish young man 
 of twenty or thereabouts, dressed in a rough loose 
 shirt and trousers some sizes too large for him. 
 His feet were bare ; he was badly sunburned. He 
 had dark, defiant eyes, and very close-cut dark 
 hair. There was something attractive about his 
 face, and yet something I did not like. He looked 
 to me just the sort of young scamp that one is 
 apt to meet in out-of-the-way-corners of the 
 Empire a lad who sticks at nothing, and yet 
 contrives, by some worthless gift of personal charm, 
 to evade most of the consequences of his own ill 
 deeds. 
 
 But whatever his ill deeds had been, if any, 
 they did not seem to have prospered him much. 
 Even his clothes were clearly not his own. What 
 was he doing there, hidden on Michaelmas Island 
 all by himself ? and was he responsible for the 
 thefts that had been disturbing the town ? Just 
 as likely as not. . . . 
 
 " But how could you think that when he has 
 no boat ? " said Cristina, at this point, answering 
 the thought in my mind after a rather startling 
 fashion. 
 
 The young man was coming nearer ; it was plain 
 he meant to speak to us.
 
 264 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " He might have a canoe," I said rather sulkily, 
 for I felt I was being played with. 
 
 " They have had the shore watched for boats 
 and canoes, of course ; Mr. Belleville Hobbs said 
 so," replied Cristina ; and by this time the bare- 
 footed person in the misfit clothes was so close 
 that we had to stop. He looked at us boldly 
 with his sharp black eyes they were handsome 
 eyes, too, and I did not like to see Cristina regard- 
 ing him with the interest that she undoubtedly 
 displayed and said : 
 
 " Can you oblige me with a cigarette ? " 
 
 " You look as if you fed on them ; I know 
 your kind," was my mental remark. Aloud, I 
 said merely : 
 
 " Sorry ; I smoke a pipe." 
 
 " I'll take some tobacco, and a bit of paper, 
 then," he said, coolly. I gave them to him, and 
 he began rolling a cigarette with eager fingers. 
 The skin was deeply bronzed, but not so much 
 that I could not see the stain of nicotine on one 
 slight forefinger. 
 
 " Any matches ? " he said. I gave them, and 
 he lit the cigarette and sucked at it greedily. 
 All this time, Cristina was looking at him, and I 
 (I must confess) was growing angrier and angrier 
 at her obvious interest in the handsome young 
 waster. 
 
 " Did you never see a fellow down on his luck 
 before ? " he said to her, with a tone in his voice 
 that made me feel I would like to thrash him.
 
 MERMAID JANE 265 
 
 Cristina, oddly enough, did not avert her gaze. 
 Not even when the young wretch deliberately 
 winked at her did she turn away, and her calm, 
 pale face showed no trace of a blush. 
 
 "Look here/' said I, "I don't know what 
 brings vou here, or what your confounded name 
 is " 
 
 " Smith John Smith," he interrupted, grin- 
 ning. 
 
 " But I can tell you that if you don't behave 
 more respectfully to this lady " 
 
 " Mr. Garden, I'm going home," interrupted 
 Cristina, and I could see that she was suppressing 
 a laugh. It occurred to me that the best and 
 most modest of women has a streak of plain brass 
 somewhere in her composition, if you are unlucky 
 enough to light on it. 
 
 " You are not staying on this island ? " she 
 threw out at the man. 
 
 " Got it in one," he nodded. " Staying over at 
 the native village there, beyond Torrestown a 
 good way. The confounded niggers were to have 
 called to take me back in their canoe, but they 
 haven't turned up yet." 
 
 " We can give you a seat as far as Torrestown 
 in our sloop," offered Cristina. She was looking 
 at " Smith " very closely, but I could not see 
 what she was looking at. 
 
 " No, thanks, I don't want to go to that hole. 
 The niggers for me," replied the man. He seemed 
 to feel the roughness of his clothes a good deal
 
 266 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 small wonder, in the case of such a dainty little 
 lady as Cristina and I thought that he actually 
 winced under her look. But he carried it off with 
 another -wink, and a " So long ! " as we turned 
 away. I felt my fingers tingling. 
 
 " Of all the confounded young cubs " I said. 
 
 "He's not such a cub as you think/' said 
 Cristina ; and I was so annoyed by this that I 
 did not speak till we reached Torrestown again. 
 
 There was little pleasure for me in Cristina's 
 society, in the days that followed the trip to 
 Michaelmas Island. The weather was hot, despite 
 the strong trade-winds ; but she scarcely left her 
 room. She seemed to be busy with papers all 
 the time uninteresting chronicles of the doings 
 of North Australian towns, barren, I should have 
 supposed, of all possible interest for any created 
 being. Once or twice she honoured me by send- 
 ing me about Torrestown to look for more. 
 
 "North Australian papers any you can get," 
 she said. " Up to six months old if you like ; only 
 get them." 
 
 She was exceedingly pleased when I came in 
 one evening with a bundle of weekly newspapers 
 covered in raspberry pink. They were stout and 
 stodgy, and had columns and columns about sheep, 
 also pages on pages of the minutest gossip about 
 many (obviously) minute people. 
 
 " I like the look of those," said Cristina. And 
 nobody saw anything more of her that night. 
 
 I was fain to occupy myself with Mrs. Ash, for
 
 MERMAID JANE 267 
 
 the want of anything better. The old lady, who 
 seemed, as usual, to be vibrating between an odd 
 liking for, and an equally odd distaste towards, 
 myself, received me rather better than usual. 
 She was knitting with insatiable fury, beside a 
 lamp, on that verandah of the hotel that came 
 nearest to being cool. It was dark ; there were 
 stars in the sky, but no moon. A flying-fox, 
 stealing bananas out of the back yard, made a 
 drumming noise with its wings. The smell of 
 dust and goats came up from the road below. 
 
 " How's the inquiry getting on ? " I asked, 
 finding a chair. 
 
 " Cristina doesn't talk," was the reply. " Not 
 to me. The mule-driving man was up here an 
 hour ago, and told her there had been some more 
 things stolen. Seems they, or it, stole a pair of 
 shoes this time." 
 
 " A pair of shoes ? " I said. Something in the 
 nature of a memory was wandering darkly about 
 my mind, but I could not drag it out into the 
 light. Shoes ? . . . Shoes ? . . . 
 
 " How much longer are you and Miss Raye going 
 to travel ? " I asked, to change the subject. 
 
 " About eighteen months now. No, you needn't 
 ask. Don't know anything more than I did. 
 Never will know. Don't care. I'm not curious." 
 
 " But I am more than curious," I said, draw- 
 ing my chair nearer. I recognised something 
 propitious in the moment, and did not mean to 
 let it slip. " I mean to know, one of these days,
 
 268 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 why Miss Raye will not marry. I I have a 
 a right," I said, getting a little breathless. " I 
 have a notion it seems preposterous " 
 
 " So have I ; I really think she does," replied 
 Mrs. Ash, answering what I had not said, after 
 the manner of women. " But that makes no 
 difference. She's set in her own way. I'm 
 honest. I don't pretend to be sorry. Why 
 should I give up a year and a half's income to 
 you ? " 
 
 " Why should you, indeed ? " I asked, seizing 
 at the opportunity. " I'm a business man before 
 anything else ; I expect ' nothing for nothing, and 
 a uncommonly little for sixpence.' Natur- 
 ally as a business man if I deprived you of a 
 year and a half's income, I should feel it my duty 
 to make good the loss." I waited anxiously for 
 the reply. There was never any knowing how 
 Mrs. Ash would take things. 
 
 The stabbing needles stopped ; the wooden, 
 yet kindly face turned towards me. In the orange 
 glow of the kerosene lamp, I saw, or thought I 
 saw, a light of hope dawning upon it. 
 
 " You you could go right back to London," I 
 said, unsteadily. " You could take the B.I. boat 
 that calls here every week or two. You might be 
 in your own house in six weeks." 
 
 There was a pause a long one. Then Mrs. 
 Ash answered. 
 
 " It's not a bribe," she said. " I've seen plenty 
 of that. It's what you say business. Justice.
 
 MERMAID JANE 269 
 
 Nothing more. . . . I'll tell you all I know. If 
 you or anyone else can get Cristina to take off 
 that ring, the thing's done. Don't ask me why, 
 I don't know. But from things she's dropped, I 
 know that. Of course ' 
 
 The door of Cristina's bedroom opened, and she 
 came out. She was carrying a huge pile of news- 
 papers. I sprang to relieve her of them. 
 
 " Give them to the boy to throw out," she said. 
 She busied herself, when her hands were free, 
 with scissors and a small piece of paper. 
 
 " Is the knot cut, Kris-Girl ? " I asked. 
 
 Cristina lifted a tired, small face, with a faint 
 smile playing over it like a breeze over a silver 
 lake. 
 
 " We'll know to-morrow," she said. She put 
 the slip of paper carefully up her sleeve, having of 
 course no pocket. 
 
 " Good-night, all," she said, and disappeared. 
 
 I thought to please the Kris-Girl, on the morrow, 
 by ordering the sloop again ; and I must confess 
 to an attempt at " kris" work on my own part, 
 in arranging that it was to go to the native village. 
 You see, I was quite certain she meant to look 
 up the mysterious and impertinent young man. 
 I told her so, when we were ready to go down to 
 the boat. 
 
 " I do mean to," she agreed. " That's why I 
 am going to Michaelmas Island." 
 
 " But he isn't living there."
 
 270 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " He is not living there," she echoed, pulling 
 on her long, loose gloves. 
 
 " You think he is the thief ? " I asked, giving 
 up the island question. 
 
 " He is not the thief," she answered, mis- 
 chievously. " If you will kindly give me your 
 hand, I can get over the gunwale." 
 
 She seemed unusually thoughtful on the way 
 over ; I fancied that something was troubling 
 her. But once the boat had touched the white 
 sand of Michaelmas Island she was herself again. 
 
 " The toy raft is gone," I said, as we walked 
 up the beach, leaving Mrs. Ash comfortably seated 
 in the sloop. 
 
 " Yes," said Cristina. " That wouldn't happen 
 twice. Finding it, I mean." 
 
 I did not understand her in the least, but that 
 mattered nothing. The errand we were on 
 mattered nothing, either. Mr. Belleville Hobbs 
 and the distresses and curiosities of Torrestown 
 were of no conceivable importance. The only 
 thing that mattered in the world was the fact 
 that Cristina and I were walking about Michaelmas 
 Island by ourselves, and that she seemed inclined 
 to be amiable. 
 
 Yet she was preoccupied, too preoccupied and 
 sad. That touched me, though the troubles of 
 Torrestown did not. I asked her what was dis- 
 tressing her, and she said she could not tell me 
 yet. 
 
 " It may be nothing at all," she said. " Or it
 
 MERMAID JANE 271 
 
 may be very much something. Perhaps I shall 
 have to deliver over a common sort of pilferer to 
 Torrestown " 
 
 " I can understand you wouldn't like police- 
 man work of that kind." 
 
 " I should. It is the least thing I have to fear. 
 I'm afraid of something with much more cruelty 
 in it." 
 
 " Cruelty to you ? " 
 
 " No. To the person who lives on this 
 island." 
 
 "Then you think," I said, pacing beside her 
 through the soft, hot sand (for we were slowly 
 circling the beach), " that he really does live 
 here, and that he took the goods ? " 
 
 " I can only answer that he does not, and he 
 didn't. Nevertheless, we are going to look." 
 
 " Well, I give it up," I said, contentedly. It 
 was enough to have the walk with her. 
 
 " Walk quietly," warned Cristina, though it 
 was hardly necessary. 
 
 " We were heard coming the last time. I think 
 we weren't wanted on the other side of the island, 
 somehow, where all the big rocks are, and pro- 
 bably caves as well. Now we had better not 
 speak for a little." 
 
 We did not. The sand was a trying road to 
 follow ; it scorched our faces with fierce, reflected 
 heat, and dazzled our eyes almost unbearably. 
 But it was soft and silent ; we made no noise as 
 we advanced. I began to think less about Cris-
 
 272 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 tina and more about the interest of the hunt on 
 which we were engaged. I had none of her 
 obvious sympathy for the young waster we had 
 seen the other day ; nothing would have pleased 
 me better than to see him handcuffed. 
 
 We must have been nearly half-way round the 
 island when we came in sight of the great white 
 pinnacle that we had seen in the distance, a few 
 days earlier. Seen near at hand, it was an im- 
 posing sight. At its base was a rubble of broken 
 creamy rocks, overgrown with green vines ; its 
 forefoot seemed to break off in deep blue water, 
 where a stream had made a passage through the 
 coral reef. 
 
 I think our eyes Cristina's and mine were 
 both badly dazzled by the glaring sand, for we 
 did not see at once that there was something on 
 the top of the pinnacle. I saw it first, and pointed 
 it out, shading my scorched face with a banana 
 leaf, as I looked up. Cristina looked too, and 
 clutched my arm tight. There was some reason, 
 for the thing on the pinnacle was a human being, 
 roughly dressed in a piece of calico that was 
 wound under one shoulder, and about the body. 
 As we looked, an incredible thing happened. The 
 figure, which was standing with its face turned 
 away from us, suddenly spread out its arms, leaped 
 into air, and flashed down through eighty feet 
 of empty space into the sea. 
 
 " God, what a dive ! " I breathed. " I was at 
 the Olympic Games at Stockholm two years ago,
 
 MERMAID JANE 273 
 
 and I'm shot if there was anything better than 
 that." 
 
 Cristina's hand slid from my arm, leaving the 
 world suddenly emptier. I saw with some 
 astonishment the white distress of her face. 
 
 " I've got to, but it is dreadful," she said, half 
 to herself. "If it weren't for those innocent 
 creatures in Torrestown the women and the little 
 children." 
 
 "I suppose you know that my small remnant 
 of intellect is fast giving way," I observed. " Was 
 that a real thing we saw ? and where in the name 
 of common sense do the innocent women and 
 children come in ? " 
 
 "I dare say you can understand the raft now," 
 was all she said, hurrying me on as fast as we 
 both could go. " Hush, don't speak. We must 
 follow and get there before we are seen or heard." 
 
 We came out in another minute at the far side 
 of the pinnacle. For the moment there was no- 
 thing to be seen. Cristina imperiously motioned 
 me to duck behind a rock with her, and I had no 
 objection in the world. Some rays of light were 
 beginning to dawn. I did understand what a 
 miniature raft might be used for, if towed behind 
 a man who could dive like a fish-hawk, arid doubt- 
 less swim like a fish. What I could not under- 
 stand was how she had known it, days past. Nor 
 could I fathom the meaning of her last sayings. 
 
 Presently she touched my arm, and pointed, 
 and I saw a small, sleek head cutting through the 
 18
 
 274 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 water. It went at a rate that surprised me, in 
 spite of the many surprises I had had that day. 
 It was making for the shore, a good way off. 
 But we saw it come to land ; saw a slim body, 
 covered in a yard or two of calico, land among the 
 boulders ; saw it disappear into what looked like 
 a crack between two projecting buttresses of 
 rock. . . . 
 
 " There is a cave there," pronounced Cristina 
 with confidence. " Mr. Garden, will you promise 
 to do just what I ask you for the next few minutes." 
 
 " Certainly," I agreed. 
 
 " Then let me go there alone." 
 
 " Where that young cub has gone ? Certainly 
 not." 
 
 " You promised." 
 
 "Then I take it back," I said coolly. "He 
 would simply insult you, if his behaviour the 
 other day is any guide." 
 
 Cristina hung on one foot, puzzled, yet not (it 
 seemed) angry. 
 
 "I see I shall have to," she remarked. She 
 felt in one of her sleeves, and pulled out two news- 
 paper cuttings. 
 
 " Read those," she said, keeping her eyes on 
 the crack into which the swimmer had disappeared. 
 " You know that I agree with the proverb about 
 unfinished work as a general rule " (the un- 
 pleasantness of the implication showed me that 
 she was rather angry) " but if } r ou take up that 
 position '
 
 MERMAID JANE 275 
 
 One of the slips a fairly old one told of the 
 illness of a certain famous woman swimmer, Miss 
 Jane Mortimer of Sydney, commonly nicknamed 
 " Mermaid Jane." Mermaid Jane, it said, was 
 never likely to swim or dive in public again. She 
 was seriously ill. Nothing was said as to the nature 
 of the illness, but a good deal about the girl's 
 celebrity ; how she had broken all the women's 
 records in the world ; how she had competed at 
 
 " Why, I saw her at Stockholm ! " I exclaimed, 
 finishing the slip. " She and that fellow dive just 
 alike. Australian style, I suppose. It seems a 
 sad story, but " 
 
 " Read the other," said Cristina, impatiently. 
 
 The other slip was quite different. It was a 
 cutting from a fairly recent number of the rasp- 
 berry-pink paper, and it told of the escape of a 
 leper from Compass Island, off the Queensland 
 coast. There are a good many lepers in Australia, 
 and the Health Department makes short work of 
 them wherever found. Black, brown, or white, 
 they are taken off to one island prison or another, 
 and there their lives must drag through to the 
 inevitable, terrible end. There is a gruesome sort 
 of secrecy maintained about these lazarets and 
 their life prisoners. Names are often not known ; 
 the feelings of families must be spared in all 
 possible ways. Sometimes a man or woman 
 reported dead is not dead at all, only gone to 
 Compass Island. 
 
 Escapes seldom occur, but when they do, they
 
 276 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 make a sensation. It is no joke to have an 
 officially certified leper, who may present no 
 visible signs of the disease, wandering about in 
 the midst of an unprotected community. The 
 Queensland papers had fairly " spread them- 
 selves " over the matter. The fugitive was a 
 woman, name not mentioned, who had got away 
 from the island by swimming. . . . 
 
 At this point I looked up. 
 
 " You see ? " said Cristina. 
 
 " I do, at last," I answered her. " She played 
 her game well, poor soul. . . . Yes, I suppose you 
 must ; there are all those folk in Torrestown to 
 think of." 
 
 " She didn't think of them," said Cristina. 
 " That's the only thing that gives me courage. 
 One knows a lot about Jane Mortimer ; she was 
 a famous person once. Everybody said she was 
 the incarnation of selfishness ; she seemed to have 
 concentrated herself body and soul on her swim- 
 ming and diving, and cared for nothing else. . . . 
 I suppose it was that that made her so wonderful. 
 You know, there was never a woman swimmer 
 like her. She swam at Torrestown once ; she 
 must have remembered these islands, and got to 
 them by stowing away on a steamer or going 
 simply as we saw her, disguised. She might have 
 lived here for years. . . . Poor thing ! " 
 
 " If you think of the risks she had made the 
 town run already " I said. 
 
 " Yes there was no excuse."
 
 MERMAID JANE 277 
 
 " I see how you found it all out now," I said. 
 " It seems simple enough, after all." 
 
 " Everything is simple, when you look into it 
 enough," replied the Kris-Girl. " Now I have got 
 to do what I hate, and that is, tell poor Mermaid 
 Jane that she is discovered, and must go back." 
 
 I looked round at the beautiful, peaceful island ; 
 at the towering pinnacles of rock, the white sand, 
 the green lagoon, and deep-blue sea. 
 
 Everyone has seen pictures of barren, desolate 
 Compass Island and its prison lazaret. I thought 
 of them as I looked. I thought of the confine- 
 ment, the living death among those other crea- 
 tures who had trod the leper's Via Dolorosa almost 
 to its bitter end I thought of Mermaid Jane 
 with her defiant dark face, and tameless spirit, 
 mewed up on that rock of death Mermaid Jane, 
 who had spent her life in the arms of the clean 
 salt sea . . . 
 
 Cristina was gone. I watched her as she walked, 
 slowly and unwillingly, it seemed, down to the 
 "beach, and behind the opening in the rocks. 
 
 She was away some time, and when she re- 
 turned, it was alone. I saw that she was white 
 with emotion. She sat down on a rock without 
 speaking. 
 
 I gave her a minute to recover looking out 
 the while at the wide, sweet, free world of sun 
 and sea that was free to her and to me, though 
 not to all. Presently she pulled herself together 
 and spoke.
 
 278 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " I've seen her. Poor soul she is brave. She 
 says she will let us take her away ;. she even said 
 we could tow her on her little provision raft 
 behind us, so that there would be no trouble about 
 the boat after . . . You would never know 
 anything was wrong. . . . She asked me one 
 favour to let her take one more ' swallow dive * 
 from the big rock. ' You know,' she said, ' I shall 
 never never again ' ' 
 
 Cristina's voice failed her. 
 
 "" You did right," I said, to give her time. 
 " Poor Mermaid Jane ! " 
 
 We said nothing more until the small sleek head 
 appeared again in the sea, swimming to the base 
 of the giant pinnacle. Then the slim figure in 
 its swathing of calico began to climb. We watched 
 it go up and up against the lowering sun up to 
 the very crest. We saw it poise on the verge, in the 
 inimitably beautiful attitude of the swallow dive. 
 We saw it spring out and down oh God ! not 
 towards the sea, but on the landAvard side. 
 
 Cristina cried out, and flung her hands over her 
 eyes. I could not move. 
 
 I saw it all. The beautiful little figure came 
 through the air as I had seen it come at Stock- 
 holm, in the matchless flight that all Europe had 
 applauded and admired. It struck the cruel 
 rocks just as a diver strikes the sea hands and 
 head. It rolled over, and lay still. 
 
 Mermaid Jane had made her dive.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 AFTER Torrestown conies Monday Island. If you 
 go to the one, either from Sydney way, or from 
 Broouie way, you are sure to go to the other. 
 Having come so far away from anywhere that is 
 anywhere, you may as well go a little further. .... 
 Monday Island has something oddly English 
 about it, and something very Asiatic. It is a 
 patch not belonging to the original stuff, sewn on 
 to one end of Australia's mighty robe. In Monday 
 Island, you have a Residency on the top of a 
 residential-looking hill, inhabited by a British 
 naval officer and his Victorian-mannered family. 
 You have a garrison, with barracks and bugle calls. 
 You hare tennis parties, at homes, and packs of 
 cards dealt out according to the strictest rules, 
 from verandah unto verandah, all the island over. 
 Also, you have Chinese and Japanese in their 
 national dress, shops where they sell things labelled 
 with gilt tea-chest letters ; persons of inextricably 
 tangled nationality, with a general tendency 
 towards turban and cummerbund, squatting in 
 279
 
 280 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 the dust ; kava, sake, and Christian whisky, all on 
 sale ; and a hospital where the doctors get ex- 
 cellent practice in the treatment of knife wounds. 
 
 That is Monday Island. 
 
 The Kris-Girl, Mrs. Ash and myself went there 
 because you can only get the worst class of 
 steamers from Torrestown, while through Monday 
 Island run the B.I., the N.Y.K., the E. and A., 
 the K.P.M., the B.P., and other lines none too 
 well known to the travelling public of Great 
 Britain, but nevertheless regarded with wondering 
 admiration, and used with thankfulness, by all 
 who travel in the East beyond the East. The 
 very best of these lines you wish to know which 
 that is, but you will not get a business man with 
 a big export trade to tell you had not any boat 
 due for a week or two after our arrival ; so we 
 preferred to wait, especially as the shops of 
 Monday Island are not quite so bad as those of 
 Torrestown. 
 
 For a long time, this wandering existence in the 
 train of Cristina and her chaperon, through strange 
 places and stranger adventures, through lands of 
 ruined palaces, buried treasures, mysterious prima 
 donnas, and " pink beasts " who kept tame devil- 
 fish in pools, had seemed to me like something in 
 a dream. The studious pretence of business 
 interests, which had been at least half real in the 
 first instance, had somehow flickered out. Reasons 
 for wandering on and on like this I had none, any 
 more than had Maeldune of the many isles. Like
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 281 
 
 Maeldune, I took what was coming, and went on 
 to what came next. 
 
 If it was a dream, however, I felt that it was 
 one from which I should one day wake. What 
 the waking might be, I did not know. It might 
 be that I should wake to dark and loneliness, or 
 to golden sunrise with all the birds singing, and 
 bells that were sweeter than bird-voices ringing 
 in the opening of another life. That, Cristina 
 knew. I was minded that she should tell me, 
 before much longer. 
 
 " If you could get her to take off that ring," 
 Mrs. Ash had said. There was something in the 
 ring, then the great marquise-shaped trinket of 
 carved Chinese gold that stood between me and 
 my happiness I had begun to think of late, be- 
 tween the Kris-Girl and her happiness too. 
 
 In the meantime, she seemed to show more con- 
 fidence in me with every day. It had been my 
 work to console and soothe her, in the shock of 
 Mermaid Jane's terrible death for which Cris- 
 tina, unreasonably, felt herself responsible. It 
 was my task to find hotels, arrange about boats, 
 suggest " sights " that ought to be seen (thereby 
 awaking the unspoken hostility of patient Mrs. 
 Ash). It was my privilege to attend the two 
 in their walks, and on their calling excursions ; 
 indeed, so much had fallen to my share that I 
 knew very well Monday Island, not to speak of 
 Torrestown and Wangi and places further back, 
 regarded me as one to whom much more was yet
 
 282 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 coming. I made no attempt to correct the im- 
 pression, since I hoped that it might not, in the 
 end, prove to be incorrect after all. 
 
 But Cristina herself began to see some of the 
 nods and winks, and, after we had been a little 
 while at Monday Island, decreed that Mrs. Ash 
 and herself must do their visiting alone. So they 
 set forth along the mango-shaded roads, parasol'd, 
 card-cased, and feathered and frilled, while I 
 loafed disconsolately about the town, thanking my 
 fortunate stars that at least Cristina seemed to 
 have given up her " Kris-Girl " fancies, and to be 
 settling down to ordinary young-ladyhood. 
 
 This being the case, I was somewhat taken 
 aback when the sudden turning off of day at half- 
 past six o'clock brought the Kris-Girl and Mrs. 
 Ash back to the hotel with all the visible signs of 
 a new quest about them. That is, Mrs. Ash 
 looked unusually wooden, and was talking about 
 how to put hot-water pipes into your north walls, 
 so as to grow peaches in the open (I had noticed of 
 late that Cristina' s wild adventures acted on Mrs. 
 Ash in inverse ratio to their wildness), while Cris- 
 tina herself was bubbling over with brightness 
 and fun. 
 
 " It isn't time for dinner yet, because the dinner 
 hour is not twenty minutes past," I said resignedly. 
 " You had better sit down on the verandah and 
 tell me about it. Who has killed whom, or who 
 wants the stolen diamond necklace taken out of 
 the hole in the water-butt, or what "
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 283 
 
 "You are perfectly disgusting," pronounced 
 Cristina, working her pretty fan rather harder 
 than was necessary before her flower-bright face. 
 " You know quite well that I never hunted a 
 murderer or a necklace in my life." 
 
 " I'm speaking figuratively. What is it this 
 time ? " 
 
 "Well, if you really want to know I don't 
 think you do, so you shall it's the Beautiful 
 Barmaid." 
 
 " The how much ? " 
 
 " Don't tell me you don't know about her," 
 warned Cristina, " for the whole island is talking 
 about nothing else." 
 
 " Do you mean the good-looking little piece in 
 the hotel down the street ? " 
 
 " Yes. It seems she's a new arrival ; only 
 been here about three weeks, but in that time 
 she has contrived to turn the heads of most of 
 the men the eligible men the men who were 
 paying attention to the ladies of the town be- 
 fore. It's like a sort of hypnotism. The girls 
 are awfully upset about it. One of them has 
 quarrelled with the man she was engaged to, and 
 another's likely to, and how many engagements 
 the affair has nipped in the bud, I shouldn't like 
 to say." 
 
 " Well, I haven't seen much of Australia yet," 
 I said, " but from what I have seen, it didn't 
 appear to me that the average Australian takes 
 barmaids very seriously, though he does hang
 
 284 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 about in their company a good deal more than a 
 man of the same class would do at home." 
 
 " The Beautiful Barmaid seems to have made a 
 record then, for they are taking her seriously. 
 They say she's quite a gentlewoman, and very 
 ' refined.' ' 
 
 " When I was a governess, I used to give any 
 girl an extra hour on the blackboard, if she used 
 that word," remarked Mrs. Ash. " You might 
 as well say a ' perfect lady,' Cristina." 
 
 " But I understand," said the Kris-Girl, with 
 a little sparkle, " that that is what the Beautiful 
 Barmaid is refined, and a perfect lady who keeps 
 herself to herself, and who meets all advances with 
 the discouraging reply, ' No/ ' Who are you 
 addressing ? ' 
 
 "Cristina, you are getting extremely vulgar; 
 I should not think I was earning my salary 
 honestly if I did not tell you so," remarked Mrs. 
 Ash. 
 
 " Thank you, dear, I'll try and remember. 
 But it may be difficult, because the girls of the 
 town, headed by the Resident's daughter, have 
 been asking me to try and do something, and I'm 
 afraid it may be a case of fighting the devil with 
 fire before we've done." 
 
 " Then you are on the side of the society girls ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " If you had seen little Emmy Windermere," 
 replied Cristina, in her crossways fashion, "trying 
 not to cry, when she told me about Captain
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 285 
 
 Jolliffe, whom she's going to marry next month 
 and Miss Crackenbury, that very pretty girl who 
 plays the violin ; why, she's lost half a stone 
 weight this week and that girl with the red 
 wavy hair, whom you admired down at the 
 boat ; she's Lord Walburg's granddaughter ; they 
 came out to Australia in the fifties and lots 
 more " 
 
 " Why, the barmaid must be a perfect Helen 
 of Troy, to do so much damage ! Can't say I 
 noticed it particularly. I'll go and hold an in- 
 spection after breakfast to-morrow." 
 
 " Of course," said Cristina, with a tilt of her 
 pointed chin. I hoped she was jealous ; as a 
 matter of fact, I was not at all interested in the 
 barmaid. The lover of the dainty Kris-Girl, 
 aristocrat from her sleek small head to her little 
 French toes, was not likely to transfer his affec- 
 tions to a Perfect Lady who sold drinks over a 
 counter to leering, swearing men. However, like 
 the hero of a Victorian novel, I thought it good to 
 " dissemble." 
 
 " Someone brought her to the tennis-club last 
 week," went on Cristina, " and none of the women 
 would speak to her ; and when the men saw 
 that, they crowded round the barmaid, and left 
 the ladies to themselves. Then next tennis after- 
 noon they brought her again, and there wasn't a 
 woman there. Last night there was a subscrip- 
 tion dance, and the barmaid came ; and Miss 
 Walburg, and the Resident's daughter, and all
 
 286 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 the rest were left sitting while the men fought 
 over her. When she isn't about they try to 
 come back to their allegiance, but the girls won't 
 have it, and then the men tell them they're narrow- 
 minded and spiteful, and jealous of another 
 woman's looks." 
 
 " Well, aren't they ? " I said teasingly. 
 
 " I must go and dress," was Cristina's reply ; 
 and I saw that she had ranged herself heart and 
 soul on the side of the deserted society girls of 
 Monday Island. 
 
 I did not wait till next morning, after all. It 
 seemed to me that there might be something in- 
 teresting to be seen, if I went down to the hotel 
 at the end of the street, and that it was likely to 
 be more, rather than less, interesting, in the 
 sentimental hour that follows dinner and its 
 accompaniments. 
 
 In London, or in the country, for the matter 
 of that, the partners of Garden, Whitecross, & 
 Garden, are not to be seen hanging about public 
 bars. Australia has different standards. I accepted 
 them, and went into the bar that enshrined. the 
 loveliness of the Beautiful Barmaid, resolved to 
 unriddle, if I could, the secret of her astonishing 
 fascinations. 
 
 It was a big place, full of marble and looking- 
 glasses and polished counters and brass rails. 
 Though it was just about dinner time, there were 
 a number of men there loafers from the quays, 
 remittance men of the type only too familiar to
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 287 
 
 every Australian traveller, clerks, shopmen, and 
 a large sprinkling of young fellows who seemed to 
 be of good social position. Half a dozen of them 
 stood round the barmaid, trying to attract her 
 attention. The young lady, behind her mahogany 
 fortress, was wiping glasses with an amateur non- 
 committal sort of air, holding herself very erect, 
 and looking at no one. There was a smell of beer 
 and whisky and sawdust ; the moon, half full, 
 shone in at the door, but its silver-pure rays were 
 almost drowned in the flood of harsh incandescent 
 gas. 
 
 I ordered an iced lager, and the young lady 
 detached her attention from the glass that she 
 was (very imperfectly) wiping, long enough to 
 hand me the drink. She did so without looking 
 at me, and dropped my money into the cash 
 register as if it burned her fingers. I perceived 
 that someone had been talking, and that Cristina 
 had been involved in the talk. Before long I 
 understood this more distinctly, for, drinking the 
 beer, I heard her say a word or two to the nearest 
 man, and I could have sworn that the phrase her 
 " fancy-man " was spoken. The admirer turned 
 round and looked at me, and then buried himself 
 in his whisky again. 
 
 Now I will confess that up to this I had been 
 neither on the one side nor the other, I did not 
 consider the profession of a barmaid a desirable 
 one for any woman in the abstract, but in detached 
 instances, I suppose I was as capable of making
 
 288 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 exceptions as are most men. I had thought the 
 young lady a decidedly pretty girl when I had 
 caught a glimpse of her, passing down the street, 
 and I was rather inclined to suppose that the 
 society section of the town was making a fuss 
 about nothing in particular. But when I heard 
 what sounded like a scornful reference to Cristina 
 Raye, made over a beer-slopped counter in a 
 public bar, I saw red. I could do nothing ; the 
 men had not spoken, and you can't drag a girl 
 out by the neck and make her swallow her words 
 but from that time on I was on the side of my 
 Kris-Girl, heart and soul, and consequently, on 
 the side of the maltreated young gentlewomen of 
 Monday Island, whose lovers, so it seemed, had 
 been boldly snatched from their arms. . . . 
 
 I had a good look at the barmaid before I went 
 out. Her name, I recollected, was Lily Laurence, 
 and she was reputed to be a match for her name 
 in reserve of character, elegant refinement of 
 behaviour. She was quietly dressed, but I had 
 seen a good deal during these last few months of 
 quiet dresses that might have fairly howled had 
 they given forth their prices, and I had an idea 
 that the quietness was not cheap. She had some 
 very handsome jewellery ; they told me later on 
 that it was a gift from her brother. She spoke 
 very little, and made good play with a pair of 
 exceedingly handsome black eyes, when they were 
 not modestly veiled under their long lashes. She 
 was not rouged or made up in any way, and I
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 289 
 
 judged her excellent figure to be her own. When 
 a half -drunk remittance man, in the far corner of 
 the bar, began to swear at his companion, Miss 
 Lily turned sharply on him, and told him to re- 
 member that there was a lady in the room. The 
 man was somewhat roughly assisted out of the 
 door by his neighbours, who immediately came 
 up to Lily's corner to obtain their meed of a smile 
 and a word. His mate, however, seemed inclined 
 to dispute the justice of the eviction. 
 
 He was rather far gone himself, and seemed to 
 have reached the quarrelling stage. 
 
 " People who are so so so beautiful particular 
 shouldn't ought to be selling booze in a public 
 bar," he stammered. " What're yer here for if 
 it isn't to make us fellows drink ? What're yer 
 grumbling at mud for, when ye've picked a damn 
 muddy road to walk " 
 
 : ' Turn him out," said the barmaid, without 
 raising her voice or even her eyes. Two devoted 
 admirers ran him into the street. 
 
 " I'll have no language in my bar," said Lily. 
 " I'll have you to know who I am." She resumed 
 her low-voiced conversation with the heir of the 
 biggest shipping house in Northern Australia. 
 
 " That's what she is," gushed a man close to 
 myself. " Not such a lady in any bar of Australia 
 as Lily. All the girls down on her, just because 
 the poor thing has to serve behind a bar to keep 
 her poor old father. Lily don't like it. She's 
 refined by nature. She had to go into a bar, 
 19
 
 290 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 but she lets everyone know she's a real lady all 
 the same, and she wouldn't be doing it if she 
 could help it." 
 
 "I don't know Australia," I said. " I suppose 
 there are no shops or offices a girl can go into, or 
 any job she can get teaching children, or nursing 
 sick people. It seems a pity. We manage things 
 better in England." 
 
 The man was too stupid with drink to under- 
 stand me, and I do not think Miss Lily could have 
 caught my words ; but at this point she leaned 
 over the bar and asked me rather sharply if I 
 wanted anything more. 
 
 " No, thanks," I replied. 
 
 " Then you can go ; we don't want loafers," 
 she ordered. I lifted my hat, and went. 
 
 Xext morning, when I came downstairs, I found 
 Mrs. Ash waiting for me in the hall. She motioned 
 me aside into a sitting-room. 
 
 " I want to tell you," she said, " that you 
 needn't be surprised at anything you may see 
 Cristina doing." 
 
 " Am I ever 1 " I asked. 
 
 " I don't know," was the wooden reply. " I've 
 only got to give you my message. Cristina's 
 been talking to me, and that's what I'm to say." 
 She withdrew to the coffee-room. 
 
 This was calculated to excite some curiosity, 
 and I kept a keen look-out for the next move of 
 the Kris-Girl. I was convinced that it would be 
 something interesting.
 
 All morning I saw nothing of her. She was 
 busy writing letters, so Mrs. Ash informed me 
 when I made inquiries. As far as I had been able 
 to judge up to the present, Cristina had few 
 correspondents, and wrote to them seldom. But 
 she seemed to have found a good many in the 
 course of the last four-and-twenty hours. The 
 messenger carried out a big bundle of unstamped 
 notes about lunch-time, and as I was in the door- 
 way at the moment of his passing, I could not help 
 seeing that the envelopes were directed in Cris- 
 tina's handwriting. 
 
 It was very hot that day. About five o'clock, 
 when the sun was beginning to moderate a little, 
 I went into the billiard-room for a game. The 
 hotel we were staying in its name was the Im- 
 perial Palace had an unusually good table, and 
 I had found myself able to make a better show 
 on it than usual. Also, the room was on the 
 shady side, and comparatively cool. 
 
 There were three or four men there when I 
 came in, watching a couple of players. The 
 marker was lounging in a corner, chalking a cue. 
 To my annoyance, he was not my marker. He 
 was a pasty polite young man who did not play 
 much of a game himself, and was altogether 
 wanting in that polite interest in a customer's 
 progress, which is the chief glory of the perfect 
 marker. I resolved that I would not play. 
 
 " Where's Black ? " I asked one of the on- 
 lookers.
 
 292 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 / 
 
 " Gone out for a walk," said the man, sticking 
 his hands in his pockets, and staring out of the 
 window. 
 
 "Gone out for a walk," he repeated. " With 
 Miss Raye." 
 
 I believe I opened and shut ray mouth once or 
 twice, like a frog, but I had the sense to say 
 nothing. I found myself out on the landing by- 
 and-by, without any clear remembrance of having 
 left the room. Gone out for a walk with Miss 
 Raye! Black! 
 
 I had a liking for the marker, I must confess. 
 He was a fine, manly young fellow, with an up- 
 standing sort of presence, and an expansive shirt- 
 front that somehow suggested an expansive heart. 
 He had been a pugilist of some celebrity before 
 settling down to his present work, and he had the 
 straight-glancing, quiet eye of the fighting man, 
 also the fighting man's broad shoulders and length 
 of arm. He wore a rather gaudy sort of mous- 
 tache, and did his hair in two pigeon-wings, not 
 innocent of oil, his socks and ties suggested 
 rainbows and sunsets too freely ; he dropped an 
 " h " unobtrusively now and then, and didn't 
 seem to care. He played a splendid game of 
 billiards, and could coach a weak player effec- 
 tively. He wasn't greedy after tips, and he was 
 a sober fellow, at least, I thought so. On the 
 whole, as good a marker as you could wish to see. 
 But . . . Black out walking with Cristina ! 
 
 I wondered if Monday Island was a bad place
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 293 
 
 for sunstrokes . . . she had a habit, that I had 
 often begged her to abandon, of going out in full 
 noontide with nothing but a parasol to protect her 
 unhatted head. Could she have 
 
 Then the truth struck me struck me hard 
 and I went up to my own room to sit down on 
 the edge of the bed and laugh. 
 
 " Oh, Kris-Girl ! " was all that I could say, 
 between paroxysms. "Oh, Kris-Girl ! " 
 
 I got my hat then, and went out into the main 
 street. I felt that I just had to see it. 
 
 Of course there is a Lovers' Walk on Monday 
 Island ; any town especially any tropical Aus- 
 tralian town unprovided with a Lovers' Walk 
 would scarcely be a town at all. Monday Island's 
 Lovers' Walk is a fine avenue of mangoes, running 
 out of the main street. It has a good many side 
 approaches ; I chose one of these, and advanced 
 quietly. 
 
 It was the hour when Monday Island takes its 
 evening drive. On a bench just beside the open- 
 ing of the big main road, where all the motors, 
 horses, and buggies must pass by, sat Bob Black, 
 in the cleanest possible white suit, with shoes 
 like twin lilies of abnormal size, a collar that 
 pressed the lobes of his red ears horizontally out- 
 wards, and a Panama of much cost, set slightly 
 sideways on a well-oiled black head. The ends of 
 his moustache had been waxed out till they could 
 be seen from behind his back, and he had a rose 
 in his buttonhole as big as a biscuit. Beside him
 
 294 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 sat Cristina, very prettily dressed, and smiling up 
 into his face. The features of the ex-prize-fighter 
 were glowing with mingled satisfaction and 
 embarrassment ; it was clear that he hoped 
 everybody would see him, and equally that he 
 feared it. 
 
 I left them, oppressed with emotions that found 
 vent once more in the solitude of my bedroom. 
 I believe the chambermaid thought I had been 
 drinking, for she pushed the half-open door widely 
 ajar, and looked in at me with an anxious ex- 
 pression, asking feebly the while if I had rung ? 
 
 Later in the evening I saw the Kris-Girl in the 
 hotel drawing-room, surrounded by her usual 
 following. I have not mentioned that following 
 before, perhaps ; it always annoyed me so much 
 that I did not care to think of it. But wherever 
 our wanderings had led us so far, there we found 
 the inevitable man or men who chose to flutter 
 in the flame of her brightness, and to take the 
 inevitable chance of getting scorched, unwarned 
 by any cremated corpses that he might see lying 
 about. It was so in Monday Island. Whatever 
 the Lily of the bar had done regarding the admirers 
 of resident belles, she had not touched Cristina's 
 especial reserve. 
 
 Bob Black, it seemed, was the subject of con- 
 versation. I had not the least doubt that he 
 was the subject of conversations in every drawing- 
 room of the island that night ; nor if I knew 
 Cristina that he was destined to be the subject
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 295 
 
 of a good deal more, in the course of the near 
 future. 
 
 " I can't help saying that I was surprised, Miss 
 Raye," Ledbetter was saying, with a delicately 
 reproachful inflexion. The Ledbetters are known 
 all over Australia and New Zealand as the Northern 
 Cattle Kings ; they have a number of beasts 
 that I refuse to state, knowing that no one in 
 England would believe me ; they own half-a- 
 dozen country palaces, two yachts, and (as an 
 enthusiastic Queenslander told me), " a mob of 
 motor-cars." All of them have been to Harrow 
 or Eton, and most of them to Oxford. They have 
 special suites on the P. & 0., and to quote my 
 Queensland authority again they would have 
 special angels to Paradise, and special clouds to 
 sit on when they got there, if it could be managed 
 by any influence in the universe. 
 
 "Do you know, I am not at all surprised at 
 you," answered Cristina, with a very pretty smile. 
 " I have noticed that no man ever really appre- 
 ciates another man's good looks." 
 
 "Good looks! " exclaimed Ledbetter, attempting 
 to twirl a moustache that had been sacrificed 
 some time ago to fashion, and being obviously 
 embarrassed by his failure. " Do you call that 
 that billiard-marking fellow good-looking ? " 
 
 " Here's Mr. Garden ; we'll ask him," said 
 Cristina. "Mr. Garden, you're the most honest 
 person I know. On your oath, do you think Bob 
 Black good-looking ? "
 
 296 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " On my oath, and apart from any question of 
 manners or style," I said, "I do." 
 
 " Well," said Captain Jolliffe the man over 
 whom pretty little Miss Windermere was supposed 
 to be crying her eyes out " I can't understand a 
 gentlewoman admiring and a actually encour- 
 aging that sort of a cad." 
 
 Cristina looked up at Captain Jolliffe's lank 
 two yards of white evening suit, to his rather 
 stupid, rather handsome soldierly brown face. 
 
 " Oh, but Mr. Black is quite above his posi- 
 tion," she said. " He is very refined. He is fond 
 of reading, and can quote poetry, beautifully . Mr. 
 Black is quite a gentleman." 
 
 Jolliffe, who to my certain knowledge never 
 opened a book, and read no newspapers but those 
 with pink covers, turned away rather abruptly. 
 I felt a longing for a game of billiards at this 
 point, and went to seek Bob Black, who, I knew, 
 would be on duty at that hour. 
 
 It seemed, however, that half the men in the 
 hotel had been seized with a desire to play. There 
 was not a chance of getting at the table for the 
 next hour. Neither was there a chance of getting 
 a word with Bob Black, who could scarcely mark 
 the game for friendly greetings and interruptions. 
 There seemed to be a tendency to " pick " at 
 Bob with unnecessary remarks about walks and 
 fair ladies, but the big ex-bruiser held his own 
 most competently. A long cigar tucked in one 
 corner of his mouth, he attended to his customers,
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 297 
 
 entertained his friends, and answered those who 
 were neither, without turning a hair. Whatever 
 he might be in ladies' company, Bob was un- 
 deniably cool in that of men. Moreover, he sent 
 back one or two shots so shrewdly that he was 
 let alone before very long, so far as the hints and 
 winks were concerned. 
 
 I was right in concluding that the matter would 
 not end there. Next day was tennis day, the 
 great occasion of the week for Monday Island. 
 On tennis day, everyone met everyone else, clothes 
 were exhibited and criticised, social positions 
 made or lost, quarrels fomented, truces patched 
 up, new arrivals were inspected and pronounced 
 on, and also some games of tennis were played 
 by rather poor players on a ground that was none 
 of the best. 
 
 All our party had been favoured with invita- 
 tions to play, soon after we arrived. 
 
 Cristina and Mrs. Ash had accepted ; I had 
 not. But it would have taken a good deal to 
 keep me away from the tennis ground to-day. I 
 anticipated fun. 
 
 About half-past five I strolled down to the 
 ground. It was a pretty place, surrounded by 
 shady " flamboyant " trees, which at this time 
 of the year were a mass of bright red flowers. 
 There were frangipani too ; I remember that the 
 scent of their thick creamy blossoms was almost 
 overpoweringly sweet, on that hot afternoon. . . .
 
 298 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 I wonder shall I ever see or smell a frangipani 
 again, without wanting to laugh ? 
 
 I looked for the Lily of the bar, but she was 
 not there. Perhaps her triumph of the week 
 before had been sufficient for her ; perhaps she 
 could not get off duty. At any rate, there was 
 no eager group of white-clad men round a well- 
 developed young woman in blue silk this Satur- 
 day. There was a group, but it was a group of 
 ladies : all young and pretty, all charmingly 
 dressed, and all very busy watching a certain 
 player Bob Black. 
 
 Yes, the marker was playing, and "By Jove," 
 I said to myself, " he can play ! " His opponent, 
 hitherto the undisputed champion of Monday 
 Island, was getting it extremely hot. Bob's 
 game was perhaps not in the very highest class, 
 but it was smashingly hard, and he was as active 
 as a cat. Captain Jolliffe had not a chance from 
 the first ; his defeat was handed out to him in 
 the shortest time that the rules of tennis allow, 
 and he went off with it, looking very glum, and 
 atrociously hot. 
 
 " You've got a new champion, it seems," I 
 remarked to Cristina, who slipped away a little 
 from the watching crowd when she saw me coming. 
 
 " Yes," she said. " That was quite a chance ; 
 no one had an idea that he could plaj 7 ." 
 
 " Any ball game would be a gift to a man who 
 plays such a game of billiards as Bob Black," I 
 commented. " How's the plot progressing ? "
 
 Cristina looked demurely at the toes of her 
 small white shoes. " I don't know what you 
 moan," she said. " Don't you like Mr. Black ? " 
 
 " Seems unnecessary ; he isn't exactly starving 
 for want of approbation. Will you tell me one 
 thing ? " 
 
 " Probably not." 
 
 " I'll risk it. Did you ask him, or he you to 
 go out along the Lovers' Walk ? " 
 
 Cristina ran her finger along the edge of her fan. 
 
 " If you must know," she said, " it was about 
 six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. Next 
 time it'll be a dozen of one, I think. Mr. Bob 
 Black is coming on." 
 
 " He looks like a coming-on kind," I commented. 
 
 " Not exactly," corrected Cristina. " He's sure 
 of himself, and the sort of toffee we're giving 
 him doesn't turn his head a bit. We've all agreed 
 he is ever so much nicer than we expected. In 
 fact, Miss Crackenbury and Rita Wai burg say 
 they don't mind how long the game keeps up, 
 and the Resident's niece told me this morning 
 that she hadn't an idea how little common a 
 common man was after all. She and Rita are 
 going to have him asked to the next dance." 
 
 I looked round the tennis court, and an idea 
 suddenly struck me. The men whom I saw there 
 were the " smart set " of Monday Island and its 
 neighbourhood, the natural companions of girls 
 such as these. They were perfectly turned out. 
 Their tone was good. They knew the things they
 
 300 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 ought to know, and said what they ought to say, 
 with just the right accent on every consonant 
 and vowel. They had the " something," the 
 " air," the indefinable quality of good breeding. . . . 
 
 Bob Black, now busy slaughtering another 
 champion on the court, had got quite the wrong 
 sort of tie on, and his socks screamed like the 
 parrots whose colours they had borroAved. He 
 had the accent of Little Bourke Street, he oiled 
 his hair, and neither the name nor the reality of 
 " Form " was known to him. But he was the 
 only man on the court. 
 
 Captain Jolliffe, with his coat off playing tennis, 
 looked like a plucked chicken. The great ship- 
 owner's heir was short and tubby, and waddled 
 like a duck. Ledbetter was a well set-up youngster, 
 but he had a general air of not being quite awake, 
 or alive. Five or six others, hanging uneasily 
 about the gate, had the born-tired, bar-loafing 
 look only too common in North Australia. Yet 
 I had an idea that if Bob Black had been chalking 
 cues in the billiard-room of the Imperial Palace- 
 at that minute, the youth of Monday Island 
 might not have made so poor a show. All classes 
 depend on comparisons. 
 
 I went over to the gate, accompanied by pretty 
 Rita Walburg, who had to see to the giving out 
 of tea, else I am quite sure she would not have 
 abandoned the billiard marker's guard of honour. 
 She distributed cups across the table of the little 
 tea-house, to those men who had not yet had
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 301 
 
 any, and then impounded me to bring a tray 
 along to the other end for some of the girls. I 
 did this very willingly, but when I had left the 
 tray in safety, and returned to the gate, I was 
 not too well pleased to see Bob lounging in a 
 chair, and being waited on with tea, cake, cream, 
 and sugar, by four separate ladies. It was, of 
 course, not Bob's fault ; he did not know the 
 inflexible rule that forbids the serving of a gentle- 
 man by a lady, since doubtless it did not exist in 
 his class of life. All he knew was that several 
 pretty girls wanted to give him things to eat and 
 drink, and he was not the man to baulk them. 
 There he sat, with his mighty legs sprawled out 
 in front of him, and his sleeves rolled up over his 
 bare red arms, smiling under a rakishly cocked 
 Panama at the feminine elite of Monday Island, 
 and talking to them as pleasantly and easily as 
 if they were one and all his long-lost sisters. I 
 have often wondered since, just how much Bob 
 Black may have guessed. . . . 
 
 Young Ledbetter blew in his throat like a 
 dugong. 
 
 " I call it positively sickening," he said. " Girls 
 oughtn't to be brought up in these countries at 
 all, if you ask me. It weakens .their moral tone 
 surprisingly. To see these women making much 
 of a beastly cad of a marker as they're doing " 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Ledbetter" (it was Rita Walburg 
 who was speaking), " 3 7 ou don't understand Mr. 
 Black. He can't help being a billiard-marker.
 
 302 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 He told us that he doesn't like it, and wouldn't 
 do it if he could help it. But he supports nearly 
 all his family, so the poor fellow can't choose. 
 You've no idea how much essential refinement he 
 has." 
 
 " No, I haven't," said Ledbetter shortly. " Nor 
 had anyone else. Bob Black can swear fit to beat 
 the band when he likes." 
 
 " Oh," said Rita, raising her innocent blue eyes, 
 "but he can't help that, poor fellow; I suppose 
 it's the dreadful company he has to keep." 
 
 My unlucky sense of humour betrayed me 
 again here, and I had to get out of the way. The 
 vision of the innocent young prize-fighter picking 
 up "damns" and "devils" from myself and 
 Ledbetter, overcame me altogether. . . . When I 
 got to the other end of the ground, most of the 
 girls were busy making up a mixed double ; two 
 only remained with Bob. They were sitting on 
 either side of him upon a rather short and narrow 
 bench. One of them, a dainty, prim-looking 
 girl, was asking his terms for billiard lessons in the 
 early morning. The other was biting off the end 
 of his cigar for him, before he lit it. All this was 
 both visible and audible to the two male members 
 of the " mixed," and I cannot say they looked as 
 if they were enjojdng it as much as Bob. 
 
 One might have thought that Black would be 
 fairly guyed to death over his amazing succession 
 of bonnes fortunes, but, on the contrary, all chaff 
 and there had been a good deal stopped after
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 303 
 
 a couple of days. Bob, quite quietly, and with- 
 out a shade of temper, had taken one of his tor- 
 mentors out into the back yard, and given him 
 what he called "just a little bit to go on with." 
 The aggressor went on with it, and did not ask 
 for any more. Nor did anyone else. 
 
 By this time Cristina's medicine was taking its 
 effect, though in some ways the effect was other 
 than she had intended. Captain Jolliffe, blazing 
 with rage, had ordered his fiancee to stop making 
 an ass of herself for all Monday Island to grin at, 
 and she had retorted with an effective " thou 
 also " that put an end to her troubles and his. 
 It was said they were to be married in ten days. 
 The Resident's niece had got her lover back, but 
 did not seem to want him ; there were those who 
 whispered that her jest had turned to earnest. 
 As for Rita and her affairs, Cristina, in a burst of 
 confidence, told me that she couldn't understand 
 them. Miss Walburg, in her opinion, was not 
 playing fair, and Bob as I could have told the 
 Kris-Girl myself was off his meals, and worse, 
 off his game of billiards. He had begged Rita for 
 half-a-dozen dances when the ball of the season 
 came off ; Rita might or might not give them, 
 but if she didn't Cristina was of opinion that Bob 
 might forget his refinement. . . . 
 
 After all, she need not have troubled over the 
 ball, for it proved the tamest affair that Monday 
 Island had known in a very long time all on 
 account of something that occurred on the very
 
 304 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 day itself. I was, and am, extremely sorry that 
 the play was not played out to its conclusion. 
 The sight of Lily Laurence at one end of the 
 room, herding in all the eligible men like a par- 
 ticularly able collie gathering sheep, with Bob at 
 the other, a sultan throwing handkerchiefs among 
 the fairest womanhood of the island, would have 
 been a thing to remember all the rest of one's life. 
 But it did not happen, and it was Lily herself 
 who prevented it. 
 
 At four in the afternoon, I was (I am thankful 
 to say) in the billiard-room, watching a match of 
 a hundred up between the marker and one of our 
 best players. There were a good many bets on, 
 but the odds offered against the other man were 
 heavy, and not very freely taken. I had a 
 sovereign on the game myself, and had backed 
 Bob, at evens. 
 
 All the windows were open and the double 
 doors hooked back, the swing panels in the ceil- 
 ing were open too, and the electric fans were 
 whining over our heads ; but, nevertheless, the 
 heat was pretty bad. Nobody wore a coat, and 
 every man had something iced to drink. I sat 
 drying my face with what had been a clean hand- 
 kerchief, and watching Bob, who was going to 
 play ; the sovereign I had invested seemed as 
 important to me, in that moment, as if I hadn't 
 had something like a quarter of a million of these 
 same good gold coins at my command when I 
 wanted.
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 305 
 
 Bob tucked up his sleeves a bit further, and 
 leaned out over the green cloth till his right leg 
 left the ground. It was not quite an impossible 
 stroke, but 
 
 We held our breath ; nobody spoke. 
 
 At that precise moment came a most atrocious 
 row in the stone passage leading to the billiard 
 room. Bob started, with his cue just on the move. 
 Of course he missed, and the ball 
 
 Well, we never saw where the ball went. Some- 
 thing irrupted into the billiard room at that 
 minute, that put all thoughts of ball, even of 
 bets, out of our heads. We had to look twice 
 to see that it was the Lily of Hogden's bar this 
 hundredweight or so of silk-clad flesh that came 
 hurtling into the room, dragging behind it a 
 remonstrant but defeated " boots." 
 
 Miss Laurence's refinement had vanished as the 
 rainbow-coloured medusa of the sea vanishes, 
 when stranded and licked up by the sun upon the 
 beach. Where it had been was nought. Only a 
 very angry woman, using words that might have 
 startled a bullock-driver, if he were young and 
 new to his work, was there, stamping her feet on 
 the tiles of the billiard-room floor, and making 
 short bull-like rushes at Bob Black. 
 
 As for Bob, the moment he saw Lily enter, he 
 had dropped his cue, and got on the other side of 
 the table. He was much the more active of the 
 two, and I don't know how the matter might have 
 ended, had not the devoted boots, in trying to 
 20
 
 306 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 intercept the Lily, succeeded in intercepting Bob 
 instead. Immediately the Lily's hand was upon 
 his collar, and the Lily's voice proclaimed to a 
 stunned and silent billiard room. 
 
 " Xo more goings on, of this kind, not for me. 
 Bob, you come up to your room and pack your 
 things with me lookin' on, and then you come 
 down to the boat with your OWN LAWFUL WIFE, 
 and you go straight off to Sydney ! " 
 
 The roar that went up from that billiard room 
 sounds in my ears still. In the midst of it, Bob 
 and the Lily disappeared. 
 
 Some wit threw a handful of rice after them as 
 they went through the hall a few minutes later. 
 Mrs. Bob stopped short in her tracks, put both 
 her hands upon her hips, and addressed the 
 crowd, with various flowers of language. She 
 didn't want any of their etcetra'd jokes, she said. 
 Bob Black and she were lawful husband and wife, 
 married three years and a half, and if she'd 
 chosen to go under her unmarried name while she 
 was at Hogden's, it was because she and her 
 husband wanted to set up a little shawp some- 
 where Sydney wye, and a married girl in a bar 
 isn't any sort of a draw, and doesn't get any 
 wyges worth talking of. No, Hogden's didn't 
 know, and the Palace didn't know, and it wasn't 
 any of their business. Bob knew her (with a 
 coruscation of profanity), and he knew that she 
 was the strightest woman in Australia, bar none 
 (more display of amazing expletive). He'd have
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 307 
 
 split anyone's head that said otherwise. But she 
 didn't know Bob, it seemed. Well, now she did 
 know him, she was going to learn him, that was 
 all. If she caught him up to any of his games 
 
 Bob Black, ex-prize-fighter, put his hand 
 timidly on his lawful partner's arm at this, and 
 endeavoured to lead her away. Mrs. Black 
 delivered one stinging blow upon a war-worn ear 
 that scarce any man in Queensland could have 
 "got home" on, and detached herself from the 
 marker's control. 
 
 " Now, I've said my say, and I choose to go," 
 she said, "and I shall go. Bob Black" (a shower 
 of vividly descriptive adjectives), "you go first, 
 and don't let me catch you up to tricks again." 
 
 A great peace fell upon the Imperial Palace 
 Hotel, and we realised that the fun was over. 
 
 I have said that the dance of that evening was 
 a dull one. So it was, for Monday Island in 
 general. Scores, it was conceded, were fairly 
 equal between the men and women of the town ; 
 neither side, therefore, enjoyed the triumph and 
 intoxication of victory. But for Cristina and 
 myself 
 
 We were in the moonlight out among the 
 kapok trees that grew near the ballroom verandah. 
 No leaves had come upon the boughs as yet, but 
 large honey-yellow flowers clustered thick upon 
 them, and fell at our feet in golden showers. 
 
 Some little way off, the piano was rollicking
 
 308 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 out a merry two-step ; light skirts flashed past 
 the verandah doors, and white suits stamped 
 joyfully up and down. Here, in the glancing half- 
 shade of the kapok boughs, with the warm sea 
 creaming on the beach not far away, there was 
 solitude enough for us. 
 
 Cristina's small left hand, with the marquise 
 ring of carved gold, hung down at her side. I 
 lifted it, and asked her 
 
 " May I ? " 
 
 She answered not a word, but I felt her tremble 
 with some emotion that I could not altogether 
 understand ... or could I ... perhaps ? She 
 made no resistance as I drew the ring from her 
 hand. 
 
 On the soft white flesh where the ring had 
 lain, there was a wide, purple scar. 
 
 Cristina covered it with the other hand, and 
 looked pitifully at me. 
 
 " I can't tell you," she said. 
 
 " You don't need to, Cristina," I answered, 
 using her Christian name for the second time. 
 " You have laughed at me this long while for being 
 stupid about your own especial talents about 
 these things, you know that you find out. ... I 
 acknowledge I have been ; my mind isn't light 
 enough to follow yours, in affairs that concern 
 Tom, Dick, and Harry, and all the world. But 
 when it's something that has to do with you 
 
 I stopped for a moment it was hard to speak. 
 
 " When it has to do with you," I went on,
 
 TALE OF THE BEAUTIFUL BARMAID 309 
 
 " then, my Kris-Girl, I can cut as sharply through 
 a mystery as yourself. Because, where it's love 
 love, Cristina a man can always do better 
 than his best." 
 
 I lifted her hand again. 
 
 "That scar," I said, "was made three and a 
 half years ago, by the mad dog that bit your 
 fiance. You went through the same treatment 
 as he did. He died, and you knew that you might 
 have the same horrible end to face. You couldn't 
 bear the thought, and you ran away from it kept 
 running away. You consulted doctors, and they 
 told you that the longest period of incubation, 
 fairly authenticated, was about five years. So 
 you gave yourself five years to carry that fear 
 about with you alone." 
 
 " How did you know ? " asked the Kris-Girl, 
 in a low voice. 
 
 " I was with you, and I loved you," I an- 
 swered. "Besides, Miss Kris-Girl, there are 
 doctors in every port, and other people besides 
 you can get dates from them, and put these dates 
 together. Talking of ports," I said, "I've some- 
 thing here that I got in the last one where the 
 pearl fisheries are. You remember that shop 
 kept by the old Jew ? " 
 
 I took a pearl half-hoop from my pocket. Old 
 Rosenstein had told me it was the finest he had 
 put together for the last ten years, and I do not 
 think he lied. I slipped it over the scar on the 
 small white hand.
 
 310 KRIS-GIRL 
 
 " Now," I said, " we will go down together and 
 throw that gold marquise into the sea. And you 
 and I, Cristina, will take what may or may not be 
 coming together.'' 
 
 That was three years ago. Cristina the Second 
 bit a pearl out of the half -hoop last week. I shall 
 have some trouble in getting it matched. 
 
 THE END 
 
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