“’E looked like Christ,” said the boxer. “’E was a queer un.  How’d you like to chyse up there to his roost in the ’ills?”

The next morning at five—­it was not daybreak until six—­we met at Wing Luey’s for coffee and bread, which cost four cents.  Prince Hinoe was there as usual, and asked us whither away.  He laughed when we told him, and said the nature men were maamaa, crazy.  The Kid was of the same mind.

We went up the rue de Sainte Amelie to the end of the road, and continued on up the valley.  We could see far above us a small structure, which was the Eden that Darling had made for the Adamic colony he had established.

The climb was a stiff one on a mere wild pig-trail.

“The nyture man would ’ike up ’ere several times a day, after the frogs closed his road,” said the New Zealander.  “There was less brush than now, though, because ’e cut it aw’y to carry lum’ber and things up and to bring back the things ’e grew for market.  ’E and ’is gang believed in nykedness, vegetables, socialism, no religion, and no drugs.  The nytives think they’re bug-’ouse, like Prince Hinoe, and I don’t think they ’re all there, but you couldn’t cheat him.  ’E’d myke a Glasgow peddler look sharp in buyin’ or sellin’.”

The Christchurch Kid was himself strictly conventional, and had been genuinely shocked by Darling’s practices, and especially by his striking resemblance to the Master as portrayed by the early painters, and by Munkacsy in Christ Before Pilate.

“’E was all right,” he explained to me as we climbed, “but ’e ought to been careful of ’is looks.  I was ’ard up ’ere in Papeete once, and was sleepin’ in an ole ware’ouse along with others.  Darling slept on a window-sill, and ‘e used to talk about enjoyin’ the full sweep o’ the tradewind.  We doubted that, an’ so one night we crept upstairs and surprised him.  ‘E was stretched out on a couple o’ sacks, and a reg’ler gale was blowin’ on him.  ‘E bathed a couple o’ times a day in the lagoon or in fresh water, but ‘e believed in rubbin’ oil on his skin, and when a bloke is all greasy and nyked, ’e looks dirty.  ’Is whiskers were too flossy in the tropics.”

It took all my wind to reach the Eden, a couple of miles from our starting-point, and we were on all fours part of the way.

“’E could run up here like an animal,” declared the fighter.  “Once when a crowd of us went to visit ’im, ’e ran up this tr’il a’ead of us, and when we arrived all winded, blow me up a bloomin’ gum-tree if ’e ’ad n’t a mess of feis and breadfruit cooked for us.”

We came to a sign on the trail.  “Tapu,” it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade any one to enter upon his land.

“’E’s a cryzy Frenchman with long whiskers,” said the Kid. “’E ’as a grudge against any one who speaks English and also against the world.  They s’y that ’is American wife ran aw’y from ’im, or an American took ’is nytive wife aw’y.  ’E packs a revolver.”