“He looks like a beadle in a dissentin’ church, with a long, skinny neck, a pasty face, and a cockney accent.  I went to see him, and he talked like an underdone curate who had had a bad night.  When he got off the ship, where he owed everybody, includin’ the smokin’-room, he came to see me with some crazy papers for me to sign.  He said then he had not a shillin’, and I advised him to go to work.  He said there wasn’t any work; so knowin’ Llewellyn was badly in need of people, I sent him to his vanilla plantation out Mataiea way.  You know here they haven’t the bees or whatever it is that transfers the pollen from the stigma to the anther or what-d ’ye-call-it, and so they do it by hand with a piece of bamboo or a stem of grass.  The girls do it mostly, but I thought this jackpuddin’ could make an honest pound or two.  He came tearin’ back to me sayin’ I’d insulted him with the work, askin’ him, a nobleman, to pander in the vegetable kingdom.”

“I know him.  He was at Lovaina’s,” I interposed.  “He was at the bar all the time, quoting Pope and Dryden and himself.  He said he was going around the globe on a wager of a fortune.  He was a poisonous bore, and always popped up for a drink.  By the way, he wears a monocle.”

“You’ve named him,” went on the consul.  “That’s more of the cockney’s pretense.  Here’s the poem he wrote in the calaboose.  He did it on his shirt-front because the economical French gave him no paper.  Lontane thought it might be his will or a plot, and brought the shirt here, and I copied the accursed thing for my record, as I am compelled to by the rules of the august devils of Downing Street.”

    The home-land call

    Why wilt thou torture me with unripe call,
    Bringing these visions of the dear old land? 
    Dost think ’t is sweet to let thy mock’ry fall? 
    For me to hear forgotten noises in the Strand? 
    Insidious voice that will not grant my plea,
    The mem’ry of thy pleasures dost remain: 
    Oxonian-Cantabs club; blue-lit Gaiety!’

“What he needs is a permanent permit to patronize the opium den the Government runs here for the Chinese,” said Hobson.  “He’s off his dope.”

“Just a minute,” continued the consul.  “He claims to be a lord and a millionaire.  Here’s the letter.  He needs no opium to have nightmares:” 

Tuesday.

Of course, I will be called coward now, but the same people who call me this are those who have caused me to seek death, for they branded me liar and wastrel, simply on an untrue report appearing in an American newspaper.  Chief among these people are that most despicable cad Hallman, and secondly, the British Consul.  Even had I been guilty of all that has been said, why were they not manly and generous enough to give or find me congenial employment?  They are not blind and could see how anxious and willing I was to obtain this.  No, they only gloated over my starving and pitiable condition.  Well, they spring from the proletariat class and not much else could be expected.