All this story, read in my friend’s very chatty letter, dismayed me not a little.  But it was really appalling to read his relation of how Schultz, the mate, went about everywhere affirming with desperate pertinacity that it was he alone who had sold the rifles.  “I stole them,” he protested.  Of course, no one would believe him.  My friend himself did not believe him, though he, of course, admired this self-sacrifice.  But a good many people thought it was going too far to make oneself out a thief for the sake of a friend.  Only, it was such an obvious lie, too, that it did not matter, perhaps.

I, who, in view of Schultz’s psychology, knew how true that must be, admit that I was appalled.  So this was how a perfidious destiny took advantage of a generous impulse!  And I felt as though I were an accomplice in this perfidy, since I did to a certain extent encourage Jasper.  Yet I had warned him as well.

“The man seemed to have gone crazy on this point,” wrote my friend.  “He went to Mesman with his story.  He says that some rascally white man living amongst the natives up that river made him drunk with some gin one evening, and then jeered at him for never having any money.  Then he, protesting to us that he was an honest man and must be believed, described himself as being a thief whenever he took a drop too much, and told us that he went on board and passed the rifles one by one without the slightest compunction to a canoe which came alongside that night, receiving ten dollars apiece for them.

“Next day he was ill with shame and grief, but had not the courage to confess his lapse to his benefactor.  When the gunboat stopped the brig he felt ready to die with the apprehension of the consequences, and would have died happily, if he could have been able to bring the rifles back by the sacrifice of his life.  He said nothing to Jasper, hoping that the brig would be released presently.  When it turned out otherwise and his captain was detained on board the gunboat, he was ready to commit suicide from despair; only he thought it his duty to live in order to let the truth be known.  ‘I am an honest man!  I am an honest man!’ he repeated, in a voice that brought tears to our eyes.  ’You must believe me when I tell you that I am a thief—­a vile, low, cunning, sneaking thief as soon as I’ve had a glass or two.  Take me somewhere where I may tell the truth on oath.’

“When we had at last convinced him that his story could be of no use to Jasper—­for what Dutch court, having once got hold of an English trader, would accept such an explanation; and, indeed, how, when, where could one hope to find proofs of such a tale?—­he made as if to tear his hair in handfuls, but, calming down, said:  ‘Good-bye, then, gentlemen,’ and went out of the room so crushed that he seemed hardly able to put one foot before the other.  That very night he committed suicide by cutting his throat in the house of a half-caste with whom he had been lodging since he came ashore from the wreck.”