He landed in the morning at the bottom of the garden and found peace, stillness, sunshine reigning everywhere, the doors and windows of the bungalow standing wide open, no sight of a human being anywhere, the plants growing rank and tall on the deserted fields.  For hours the Editor and the schooner’s crew, excited by the mystery, roamed over the island shouting Renouard’s name; and at last set themselves in grim silence to explore systematically the uncleared bush and the deeper ravines in search of his corpse.  What had happened?  Had he been murdered by the boys?  Or had he simply, capricious and secretive, abandoned his plantation taking the people with him.  It was impossible to tell what had happened.  At last, towards the decline of the day, the Editor and the sailing master discovered a track of sandals crossing a strip of sandy beach on the north shore of the bay.  Following this track fearfully, they passed round the spur of the headland, and there on a large stone found the sandals, Renouard’s white jacket, and the Malay sarong of chequered pattern which the planter of Malata was well known to wear when going to bathe.  These things made a little heap, and the sailor remarked, after gazing at it in silence —

“Birds have been hovering over this for many a day.”

“He’s gone bathing and got drowned,” cried the Editor in dismay.

“I doubt it, sir.  If he had been drowned anywhere within a mile from the shore the body would have been washed out on the reefs.  And our boats have found nothing so far.”

Nothing was ever found—­and Renouard’s disappearance remained in the main inexplicable.  For to whom could it have occurred that a man would set out calmly to swim beyond the confines of life—­with a steady stroke—­his eyes fixed on a star!

Next evening, from the receding schooner, the Editor looked back for the last time at the deserted island.  A black cloud hung listlessly over the high rock on the middle hill; and under the mysterious silence of that shadow Malata lay mournful, with an air of anguish in the wild sunset, as if remembering the heart that was broken there.

Dec. 1913.

THE PARTNER

“And that be hanged for a silly yarn.  The boatmen here in Westport have been telling this lie to the summer visitors for years.  The sort that gets taken out for a row at a shilling a head—­and asks foolish questions—­must be told something to pass the time away.  D’ye know anything more silly than being pulled in a boat along a beach? . . .  It’s like drinking weak lemonade when you aren’t thirsty.  I don’t know why they do it!  They don’t even get sick.”

A forgotten glass of beer stood at his elbow; the locality was a small respectable smoking-room of a small respectable hotel, and a taste for forming chance acquaintances accounts for my sitting up late with him.  His great, flat, furrowed cheeks were shaven; a thick, square wisp of white hairs hung from his chin; its waggling gave additional point to his deep utterance; and his general contempt for mankind with its activities and moralities was expressed in the rakish set of his big soft hat of black felt with a large rim, which he kept always on his head.