A numerous village of wattled huts stretched along the white beach of the bay where we came to anchor. I have been not a little here and there in the South Pacific in my time, but never before on the island of Lua. Its blue and lilac mountains in panorama,—white threads of falling water on their steeps,—its nearer hills, palmy and green and like moss in the softening distance, the smooth lacquered water in the bay, the beach, the little brown huts with domed roofs of leafy thatch, truly all seemed at peace. A few people came down to the beach to observe us, and presently a boat put out,—not one of the native outriggers, but a dumpy little ship's dinghy. With the aid of a glass I made out that the occupants were two white men.
Of the two men, who now came aboard the Violetta, the foremost was a tall, bony, swing-shouldered powerful man, with a melancholy countenance, dangling gray moustache, whitish hair, lean throat, remarkably large hands, and a husky voice, who carried a banjo swung by a cord around his neck; the other was plainly a Hibernian, stoop-shouldered, his hair and whiskers forming a circular, complete, and resplendent aureole around his face, at the centre of which aurora a short black tobacco pipe was firmly inserted.
“How do?” said the bony stranger, mournfully, and then casting his eyes down on the Violetta's deck, he stopped and gazed.
On the flowered carpet under the neat awning sat Mrs. Ulswater as usual with her workbasket beside her, her knitting in her hand; there were the rocking chairs with their doilies, some geranium pots along the scuppers, and some lashed to the awning supports; there sat that venerable Cingalese, Ram Nad, with his magic-basket beside him; Susannah held Georgians Tupper in her lap.
“I don't seem to get my vest around your combination,” said the bony one, observing this domestic scene. “Is it waxworks, or pirates?” He looked worried about it. “My name's Sadler,” he continued, “and this yere conflagration behind me is named Irish or Jimmie Hagan, just as you like. We'd be pleased to know you.”
This sounded ingratiating, though his countenance was melancholy. Presently he sat in one of the doilied rocking chairs, with his feet tucked away behind him, and he seemed easy-going in his talk, and candid as to his history.
He had been a sailor once, as it seemed, on a smuggling or filibustering ship along South American coasts, and after that had lived in the city of Portate, South America, and from there he had gotten himself banished on account of his interest in romantic politics, and gone to California, and made money in some kind of Oriental trade; but lately he had been in Burmah professionally, that is to say, his profession there had been that of a sort of high priest, a species of abbot of a kind of monastery; and after that in Sumatra. But a month or more since he had dropped on Lua. The island had interested him by its romantic politics. He had resolved to “take a hand in that seducing game, which it looked real sporty,” he said, “and I judged the showdown was coming soon, but it hasn't yet, and it's been rolling up the blankedest jackpot you ever saw.”
“What!” said Mrs. Ulswater.
“Beg pardon, ma'am. I shouldn't have swore, but them's the facts.”
“What are the facts?”