“That was Allen right enough!  But where is his brig?”

Jasper heard these words with extraordinary loudness.  The heavens rang with them, as if calling him to account; for those were the very words Freya would have to use.  It was an annihilating question; it struck his consciousness like a thunderbolt and brought a sudden night upon the chaos of his thoughts even as he walked.  He did not check his pace.  He went on in the darkness for another three strides, and then fell.

The good Mesman had to push on as far as the hospital before he found him.  The doctor there talked of a slight heatstroke.  Nothing very much.  Out in three days. . . .  It must be admitted that the doctor was right.  In three days, Jasper Allen came out of the hospital and became visible to the town—­very visible indeed—­ and remained so for quite a long time; long enough to become almost one of the sights of the place; long enough to become disregarded at last; long enough for the tale of his haunting visibility to be remembered in the islands to this day.

The talk on the “front” and Jasper’s appearance in the Orange House stand at the beginning of the famous Bonito case, and give a view of its two aspects—­the practical and the psychological.  The case for the courts and the case for compassion; that last terribly evident and yet obscure.

It has, you must understand, remained obscure even for that friend of mine who wrote me the letter mentioned in the very first lines of this narrative.  He was one of those in Mr. Mesman’s office, and accompanied that gentleman in his search for Jasper.  His letter described to me the two aspects and some of the episodes of the case.  Heemskirk’s attitude was that of deep thankfulness for not having lost his own ship, and that was all.  Haze over the land was his explanation of having got so close to Tamissa reef.  He saved his ship, and for the rest he did not care.  As to the fat gunner, he deposed simply that he thought at the time that he was acting for the best by letting go the tow-rope, but admitted that he was greatly confused by the suddenness of the emergency.

As a matter of fact, he had acted on very precise instructions from Heemskirk, to whom through several years’ service together in the East he had become a sort of devoted henchman.  What was most amazing in the detention of the Bonito was his story how, proceeding to take possession of the firearms as ordered, he discovered that there were no firearms on board.  All he found in the fore-cabin was an empty rack for the proper number of eighteen rifles, but of the rifles themselves never a single one anywhere in the ship.  The mate of the brig, who looked rather ill and behaved excitedly, as though he were perhaps a lunatic, wanted him to believe that Captain Allen knew nothing of this; that it was he, the mate, who had recently sold these rifles in the dead of night to a certain person up the river.  In proof of this story he produced a bag of silver dollars and pressed it on his, the gunner’s, acceptance.  Then, suddenly flinging it down on the deck, he beat his own head with both his fists and started heaping shocking curses upon his own soul for an ungrateful wretch not fit to live.