It took him long to tell it.  He wanted to talk, but weakness overcame him often, and the words were almost hushed by his breath that came short and wheezing.

“One day we opened the hatches to get coal for the galley.  The smell of gas arose.  The coal was making gas.  No fire.  Just gas.  If there was fire we never knew it.  We felt no heat.  We could find no fire.  But every day the gas got worse.

“It filled the ship.  The watch below could not sleep because of it.  If we went aloft, still we smelled it.  The food tasted of gas.  Our lungs were pressed down by it.  Day after day we sailed, and the gas sailed with us.

“The bo’sn fell in a fit.  A man on the t’gallant yard fell to the deck and was killed.  Three did not awake one morning.  We threw their bodies over the side.  The mate spat blood and called on God as he leaped into the sea.  The smell of the gas never left us.

“The captain called us by the poop-rail, and said we must abandon the ship any time.

“We were twenty men all told.  We had four whale-boats and a yawl.  Plenty for all of us.  We provisioned and watered the boats.  But we stayed by the Mongol.  We were far from any port and we dared not go adrift in open boats.

“Then came a calm.  The gas could not lift.  It settled down on us.  It lay on us like a weight.  It never left us for a moment.  Men lay in the scuppers and vomited.  Food went untouched.  No man could walk without staggering.  At last we took to the boats.  Two thousand miles from the Marquesas.  We lit a fuse, and pushed off.  Half a mile away the Mongol blew up.

“We suffered. Mon dieu, how we suffered in those boats!  But the gas was gone.  We struck Vait-hua on the island of Tahuata.  It was heaven.  Rivers and trees and women.  Women! Sacre! How I loved them!

“I came to Taha-Uka with Mathieu Scallamera.  We worked for Captain Hart in the cotton, driving the Chinese and natives.  Bill Pincher was a boy, and he worked there, too.  In the moonlight on the beach there were dances.  The women danced naked on the beaches in the moonlight.  And there was rum.  Mohuto danced.  Ah, she was beautiful, beautiful!  She was a devil.

“Scallamera and I built a house, and put on the door a lock of wood.  It was a big lock, but it had no key.  The natives stole everything.  We could keep nothing.  Scallamera was angry.  One day he hid in the house while I went to work.  When a hand was thrust through the opening to undo the lock, Scallamera took his brush knife and cut it off.  He threw it through the hole and said, ‘That will steal no more.’”

The hermit laughed, a laugh like the snarl of a toothless old tiger.

“That was a joke.  Scallamera laughed.  By gar!  But that without a hand lived long.  He gave back all that he had taken.  He smiled at Scallamera, and laughed, too.  He worked without pay for Scallamera.  He became a friend to the man who had cut off his hand.  A year went by and two years and three and that man gave Scallamera a piece of land by Vai-ae.  He helped Scallamera to build a house upon it.