and a warm deluge descended.  The wind died out.  We panted in the close cabin; our faces streamed; the bay outside hissed as if boiling; the water fell in perpendicular shafts as heavy as lead; it swished about the deck, poured off the spars, gurgled, sobbed, splashed, murmured in the blind night.  Our lamp burned low.  Hollis, stripped to the waist, lay stretched out on the lockers, with closed eyes and motionless like a despoiled corpse; at his head Jackson twanged the guitar, and gasped out in sighs a mournful dirge about hopeless love and eyes like stars.  Then we heard startled voices on deck crying in the rain, hurried footsteps overhead, and suddenly Karain appeared in the doorway of the cabin.  His bare breast and his face glistened in the light; his sarong, soaked, clung about his legs; he had his sheathed kriss in his left hand; and wisps of wet hair, escaping from under his red kerchief, stuck over his eyes and down his cheeks.  He stepped in with a headlong stride and looking over his shoulder like a man pursued.  Hollis turned on his side quickly and opened his eyes.  Jackson clapped his big hand over the strings and the jingling vibration died suddenly.  I stood up.

“We did not hear your boat’s hail!” I exclaimed.

“Boat!  The man’s swum off,” drawled out Hollis from the locker.  “Look at him!”

He breathed heavily, wild-eyed, while we looked at him in silence.  Water dripped from him, made a dark pool, and ran crookedly across the cabin floor.  We could hear Jackson, who had gone out to drive away our Malay seamen from the doorway of the companion; he swore menacingly in the patter of a heavy shower, and there was a great commotion on deck.  The watchmen, scared out of their wits by the glimpse of a shadowy figure leaping over the rail, straight out of the night as it were, had alarmed all hands.

Then Jackson, with glittering drops of water on his hair and beard, came back looking angry, and Hollis, who, being the youngest of us, assumed an indolent superiority, said without stirring, “Give him a dry sarong—­give him mine; it’s hanging up in the bathroom.”  Karain laid the kriss on the table, hilt inwards, and murmured a few words in a strangled voice.

“What’s that?” asked Hollis, who had not heard.

“He apologizes for coming in with a weapon in his hand,” I said, dazedly.

“Ceremonious beggar.  Tell him we forgive a friend . . . on such a night,” drawled out Hollis.  “What’s wrong?”

Karain slipped the dry sarong over his head, dropped the wet one at his feet, and stepped out of it.  I pointed to the wooden armchair—­his armchair.  He sat down very straight, said “Ha!” in a strong voice; a short shiver shook his broad frame.  He looked over his shoulder uneasily, turned as if to speak to us, but only stared in a curious blind manner, and again looked back.  Jackson bellowed out, “Watch well on deck there!” heard a faint answer from above, and reaching out with his foot slammed-to the cabin door.