"Everything that could happen," said the other, bitterly. "Lady Sophie and her maid, Sir Harry and the princess—the entire household suite of the King of Gee-Whiz—were mad enough to taste also of the juice of this rubber tree. It had the same effect upon them! I say to you, positively and truthfully, that then and there the island of Gee-Whiz was inhabited by the maddest population ever known in any possession of her Britannic Majesty."
"Reckon they was a pretty lively bunch to hold," suggested Curly; "but what happened next?"
"I am not quite clear as to all that transpired awfter that. I know that I was the only sane man left on the island."
"Then," remarked Curly, with conviction, taking a huge chew off his plug, "then that must shore have been one hell of a island!"
But the narrator went on unmoved: "I reproved the others, and they resented it. There was a great battle with the natives one day, of which I remember but little. I seem to have been left insensible on the field. When I recovered, I saw dawncing off across the sea the figures of all these different persons except Sir Harry—who, of course, was with me in the battle. Sir Harry was still with me, quite sober at lawst, and quite dead, I do not know from what cause. I was left alone.
"It was thus, gentlemen, that I acquired, by right, as I think, my title which I assumed—awfter acting for a time as Viceroy for her Britannic Majesty—as the King of Gee-Whiz. For a while I lived there alone. Awfterwards, in some way, which I do not quite call to mind at present, I appear to have been discovered. It was shortly awfter that I received my decoration—I beg your pardon." He flushed a dull red. "It was nothing, of course," said he. "As to saving Sir Harry, it was only what any other fellow would have done in the Army or the Navy—I don't remember which.
"So, gentlemen, I've told you my story as a gentleman should. I've been deucedly down on my luck ever since then, and I cawn't tell you, really I cawn't, how I happened to be here and in this business as you found me. There's many a younger son, in the Army or the Navy, who knocks about and gets a bit to the bad. I hope you'll not lay it up against me, I do indeed!" His head dropped forward on his chest. "I was stone broke," he whispered, "and I'd not a friend on earth."
"And so you drifted here," said Curly. "Well, it's about the right place. Heart's Desire's wide open."
"It wasn't so bad," resumed the stranger, wearily, passing his hand across his forehead; "it wasn't so bad down here for a time. I didn't mind it, being alone, that sort of thing, for you see I was alone on the island for so long. But the trouble was that I was followed all the time—have been for more than a year now—by that cursed King—that damned fiend that I thought I'd left long ago! I'd go out into the sunshine, and there he'd be, walking, and bounding, and jumping along, anyway I'd look! He'd follow me like a—look! look! there he is now. See!"
He raised a trembling finger and pointed to a spot in front of the open door. A black shadow was cast upon the floor by the strong sunlight which shone upon the figure of a leaning spectator.