The blow never fell.  Simpson’s hand unclinched and shame reddened in his face.

“Give me the oars,” he said. “Pauvre garcon—­did you think that I would strike you?”

The boy surrendered the oars and sidled aft like a crab, his eyes still rolling at his passenger.

“Why should the maimed row the sound?” said Simpson.

He rowed awkwardly.  The boy watched him for a moment, then grinned uncertainly; presently he lolled back in the stern-sheets, personating dignity.  A white man was doing his work—­it was splendid, as it should be, and comic in the extreme.  He threw back his head and cackled at the hot sky.

“Stop that!” Simpson, his nerves raw, spoke in English, but the laughter jarred to a blunt end.  The boy huddled farther away from him, watching him with unwinking eyes which showed white all around the pupil.  Simpson, labouring with the clumsy oars, tried to forget him.  It was hot—­hotter than it had seemed at first; sweat ran into his eyes and he grew a little dizzy.  The quarantine launch with its load of uniforms, among which the purser’s white was conspicuous, passed, giving them its wake; there was no sound from it, only a blaze of teeth and eyeballs.  Simpson glanced over his shoulder at it.  The purser was standing in the stern, clear of the awning, his head quizzically on one side and a cigarette in his fingers.

The rowboat came abreast of a worm-eaten jetty.

“Ici,” said the cripple.

Simpson, inexpert, bumped into it bow on, and sculled the stern around.  The cripple, hideously agile, scrambled out and held the boat; Simpson gathered up his bag and followed.

A Roman priest, black as the top of a stove, strode down the jetty toward them.

“You—­you!” he shouted to the cripple when he was yet ten strides away.  His voice rose as he approached.  “You let the m’sieu’ row you ashore!  You——­” A square, heavy boot shot out from beneath his cassock into the boy’s stomach. “Cochon!” said the priest, turning to Simpson.  His manner became suddenly suave, grandiose.  “These swine!” he said.  “One keeps them in their place.  I am Father Antoine.  And you?”

“Simpson—­Arthur Simpson.”  He said his own name slowly as thought there was magic in it, magic that would keep him in touch with his beginnings.

“Simpson?” The priest gave it the French sound; suspicion struggled for expression on his black mask; his eyes took in the high-cut waistcoat, the unmistakable clerical look.  “You were sent?”

“By the board of foreign missions.”

“I do not know it.  Not by the archbishop?”

“There is no archbishop in my Church.”

“In your Church?” Father Antoine’s eyes sprang wide—­wide as they had been when he kicked the boatman.  “In your Church?  You are not of the true faith, then?”

Pride of race, unchastened because he had not till that moment been conscious that it existed in him, swelled in Simpson.