I asked for one, and kept on asking by every mail till I got it; but the man they sent out with it chucked his job at the end of two months, leaving the launch moored at the pontoon in Horta.  Got a better screw at a sawmill up the river—­blast him!  And ever since it has been the same thing.  Any Scotch or Yankee vagabond that likes to call himself a mechanic out here gets eighteen pounds a month, and the next you know he’s cleared out, after smashing something as likely as not.  I give you my word that some of the objects I’ve had for engine-drivers couldn’t tell the boiler from the funnel.  But this fellow understands his trade, and I don’t mean him to clear out.  See?”

And he struck me lightly on the chest for emphasis.  Disregarding his peculiarities of manner, I wanted to know what all this had to do with the man being an anarchist.

“Come!” jeered the manager.  “If you saw suddenly a barefooted, unkempt chap slinking amongst the bushes on the sea face of the island, and at the same time observed less than a mile from the beach, a small schooner full of niggers hauling off in a hurry, you wouldn’t think the man fell there from the sky, would you?  And it could be nothing else but either that or Cayenne.  I’ve got my wits about me.  Directly I sighted this queer game I said to myself—­’Escaped Convict.’  I was as certain of it as I am of seeing you standing here this minute.  So I spurred on straight at him.  He stood his ground for a bit on a sand hillock crying out:  ‘Monsieur!  Monsieur!  Arretez!’ then at the last moment broke and ran for life.  Says I to myself, ’I’ll tame you before I’m done with you.’  So without a single word I kept on, heading him off here and there.  I rounded him up towards the shore, and at last I had him corralled on a spit, his heels in the water and nothing but sea and sky at his back, with my horse pawing the sand and shaking his head within a yard of him.

“He folded his arms on his breast then and stuck his chin up in a sort of desperate way; but I wasn’t to be impressed by the beggar’s posturing.

“Says I, ‘You’re a runaway convict.’

“When he heard French, his chin went down and his face changed.

“‘I deny nothing,’ says he, panting yet, for I had kept him skipping about in front of my horse pretty smartly.  I asked him what he was doing there.  He had got his breath by then, and explained that he had meant to make his way to a farm which he understood (from the schooner’s people, I suppose) was to be found in the neighbourhood.  At that I laughed aloud and he got uneasy.  Had he been deceived?  Was there no farm within walking distance?

“I laughed more and more.  He was on foot, and of course the first bunch of cattle he came across would have stamped him to rags under their hoofs.  A dismounted man caught on the feeding-grounds hasn’t got the ghost of a chance.

“‘My coming upon you like this has certainly saved your life,’ I said.  He remarked that perhaps it was so; but that for his part he had imagined I had wanted to kill him under the hoofs of my horse.  I assured him that nothing would have been easier had I meant it.  And then we came to a sort of dead stop.  For the life of me I didn’t know what to do with this convict, unless I chucked him into the sea.  It occurred to me to ask him what he had been transported for.  He hung his head.