Nobody disturbed Renouard in that room where he had shut himself in to breathe the evanescent perfume of her who for him was no more, till late in the afternoon when the half-caste was heard on the other side of the door.

He wanted the master to know that the trader Janet was just entering the cove.

Renouard’s strong voice on his side of the door gave him most unexpected instructions.  He was to pay off the boys with the cash in the office and arrange with the captain of the Janet to take every worker away from Malata, returning them to their respective homes.  An order on the Dunster firm would be given to him in payment.

And again the silence of the bungalow remained unbroken till, next morning, the half-caste came to report that everything was done.  The plantation boys were embarking now.

Through a crack in the door a hand thrust at him a piece of paper, and the door slammed to so sharply that Luiz stepped back.  Then approaching cringingly the keyhole, in a propitiatory tone he asked: 

“Do I go too, master?”

“Yes.  You too.  Everybody.”

“Master stop here alone?”

Silence.  And the half-caste’s eyes grew wide with wonder.  But he also, like those “ignorant savages,” the plantation boys, was only too glad to leave an island haunted by the ghost of a white man.  He backed away noiselessly from the mysterious silence in the closed room, and only in the very doorway of the bungalow allowed himself to give vent to his feelings by a deprecatory and pained —

“Tse!  Tse!  Tse!”

CHAPTER XII

The Moorsoms did manage to catch the homeward mail boat all right, but had only twenty-four hours in town.  Thus the sentimental Willie could not see very much of them.  This did not prevent him afterwards from relating at great length, with manly tears in his eyes, how poor Miss Moorsom—­the fashionable and clever beauty—­ found her betrothed in Malata only to see him die in her arms.  Most people were deeply touched by the sad story.  It was the talk of a good many days.

But the all-knowing Editor, Renouard’s only friend and crony, wanted to know more than the rest of the world.  From professional incontinence, perhaps, he thirsted for a full cup of harrowing detail.  And when he noticed Renouard’s schooner lying in port day after day he sought the sailing master to learn the reason.  The man told him that such were his instructions.  He had been ordered to lie there a month before returning to Malata.  And the month was nearly up.  “I will ask you to give me a passage,” said the Editor.