The change in the man’s character was much commented on in the island, and variously explained by opium and Christianity.  To my eyes, there seemed no change at all, rather an extreme consistency.  Mr. Corpse was afraid of his brother:  King Tebureimoa is afraid of the Old Men.  Terror of the first nerved him for deeds of desperation; fear of the second disables him for the least act of government.  He played his part of bravo in the past, following the line of least resistance, butchering others in his own defence:  to-day, grown elderly and heavy, a convert, a reader of the Bible, perhaps a penitent, conscious at least of accumulated hatreds, and his memory charged with images of violence and blood, he capitulates to the Old Men, fuddles himself with opium, and sits among his guards in dreadful expectation.  The same cowardice that put into his hand the knife of the assassin deprives him of the sceptre of a king.

A tale that I was told, a trifling incident that fell in my observation, depicts him in his two capacities.  A chief in Little Makin asked, in an hour of lightness, ‘Who is Kaeia?’ A bird carried the saying; and Nakaeia placed the matter in the hands of a committee of three.  Mr. Corpse was chairman; the second commissioner died before my arrival; the third was yet alive and green, and presented so venerable an appearance that we gave him the name of Abou ben Adhem.  Mr. Corpse was troubled with a scruple; the man from Little Makin was his adopted brother; in such a case it was not very delicate to appear at all, to strike the blow (which it seems was otherwise expected of him) would be worse than awkward.  ‘I will strike the blow,’ said the venerable Abou; and Mr. Corpse (surely with a sigh) accepted the compromise.  The quarry was decoyed into the bush; he was set to carrying a log; and while his arms were raised Abou ripped up his belly at a blow.  Justice being thus done, the commission, in a childish horror, turned to flee.  But their victim recalled them to his side.  ’You need not run away now,’ he said.  ’You have done this thing to me.  Stay.’  He was some twenty minutes dying, and his murderers sat with him the while:  a scene for Shakespeare.  All the stages of a violent death, the blood, the failing voice, the decomposing features, the changed hue, are thus present in the memory of Mr. Corpse; and since he studied them in the brother he betrayed, he has some reason to reflect on the possibilities of treachery.  I was never more sure of anything than the tragic quality of the king’s thoughts; and yet I had but the one sight of him at unawares.  I had once an errand for his ear.  It was once more the hour of the siesta; but there were loiterers abroad, and these directed us to a closed house on the bank of the canal where Tebureimoa lay unguarded.  We entered without ceremony, being in some haste.  He lay on the floor upon a bed of mats, reading in his Gilbert Island Bible with compunction.  On our sudden entrance the unwieldy man reared himself half-sitting so that the Bible rolled on the floor, stared on us a moment with blank eyes, and, having recognised his visitors, sank again upon the mats.  So Eglon looked on Ehud.