“Next day Scott came down to the jetty.  He sat on a stump and stared at everything.  He was ready enough to talk, in his guarded way.  Yes, he was new to the tropics; in some ways they were not what he had expected, but he was not disappointed.  He was here for the novelty, the experience.  But his friend, Louis Daurillac, had been in the Indies, and with some of Meyer’s men in Burma after orchids.  Louis’s father was a great naturalist, and Louis was very clever.  Yes, Henkel had got hold of him through Meyer.  He wanted some one to find this butterfly for him—­this golden butterfly at the headwaters of the Mazzaron—­some one whose name was yet in the making, some one he could get cheap....  So Louis had come.  He was very keen on it.  Henkel was to bear all costs, to supply food, ammunition, trade-goods, etc., and pay them according to the number of the new specimens that they found.  ’So you see,’ said Scott, with his clean smile, ’Louis and I can’t lose by it.’

“We talked a bit more, and then young Scott said to me, suddenly:  ’Henkel has everything ready, and we start in the morning.  You seem to be the only white man about here.  Come and see us off, will you?’ I said yes; afterward it struck me as curious that he should not have counted Henkel as a white man.  He laughed and apologized for the touch of sentiment.  ‘It’s like plunging head first into a very deep sea,’ he explained, ’and one likes to have some one on the shore.  You’ll be here when we come back?’ And I said yes, I’d be either unloading on the jetty or in the new cemetery by the canal.  But he didn’t smile.  His light Northern eyes were gravely considering this land where life was held on a short lease, and he looked at me as if he were sorry for me.

“I saw them off the next day.  There were six or eight men of Henkel’s, loaded with food and trade-goods, and I saw that two of them were sickening where they stood.  I looked in Daurillac’s brilliant young face, and I hadn’t the courage to say anything but, ’Have you plenty of quinine?’ He tapped a big tin case, and I nodded.  ’And what are you taking for the Indies?’ I asked.

“He fairly bubbled over with laughter.  ’You would never guess, Monsieur, but we take clocks, little American clocks.  The Indies of the Mazzaron desire nothing but little clocks; they like the tick.’

“Their men had turned down one of the jungle paths.  They shook hands with me, and Scott met my eyes with his grave smile.  ’Just drawing breath for the plunge,’ he said, with a glance at the forest beyond the last white roof.  Daurillac slipped his arm through Scott’s, and drew him after their slow-going hombres.  At the bend of the path they turned and waved to me—­Scott with a quick lift of the hand.  But little Daurillac swept off his hat and stood half turned for a minute; the sun splashed on his dark head, on his Frenchified belt and puttees, on his white breeches, and on an outrageous pink shirt Henkel seemed to have supplied him with.  He looked suddenly brilliant and unsubstantial, a light figure poised on the edge of the dark....  One gets curious notions in Herares.  The next moment they were gone.  The jungle had shut down on them, swallowed them up.  They were instantly lost in it as a bubble is lost in the sea.