CHAPTER XXXVI
THE TITLE CLEAR
Two men and a woman stood in the evening glow, looking out over the tranquil sea that crept up and licked the foot of the cliff. At their back rose the thick, tropical forest; at its edge and on the nape of the cliff stood a bungalow, fresh from the hands of a hundred willing toilsmen. Below, on their right, lay the gaudy village, lolling in the heat of the summer's day. Far off to the north, across the lowlands and beyond the sweep of undulating and ever-lengthening hills, could be seen a great, reddish structure, its gables and towers fusing with the sombre shades of the mountain against which they seemed to lean.
It was September. Five months had passed since the King's Own steamed away from the harbour of Aratat. The new dispensation was in full effect. During the long, sickening weeks that preceded the coming of the Syndicate, Hollingsworth Chase toiled faithfully, resolutely for the restoration of order and system among the demoralised people of Japat.
The first few weeks of rehabilitation were hard ones: the islanders were ready to accede to everything he proposed, but their submissiveness was due in no small measure to the respect they entertained for his almost supernatural powers. In course of time this feeling was more or less dissipated and a condition of true confidence took its place. The lawless element—including the misguided husbands whose jealousy had been so skilfully worked upon by Rasula and Jacob von Blitz—this element, greatly in the minority, subsided into a lackadaisical, law-abiding activity, with little prospect of again attempting to exercise themselves in another direction. Murder had gone out of their hearts.
Eager hands set to work to construct a suitable home for the tall arbiter. He chose a position on the point that ran out into the sea beyond the town. It was this point which the yacht was rounding on that memorable day when he and one other had watched it from the gallery, stirred by emotions they were never to forget. Besides, the cliff on which the new bungalow stood represented the extreme western extremity of the island and therefore was nearest of all Japat to civilisation and—Genevra.
Conditions in Aratat were not much changed from what they had been prior to the event of the legatory invaders. The mines were in full operation; the bank was being conducted as of yore; the people were happy and confident; the town was fattening on its own flesh; the sun was as merciless and the moon as gentle as in the days of old.
The American bar changed hands with the arrival of the new forces from the Occident; the Jews and the English clerks, the surveyors and the engineers, the solicitors and the agents, were now domiciled in "headquarters." Chase turned over the "bar" when he retired from active service under Sir John Brodney. With the transfer of the company's business his work was finished. Two young men from Sir John's were now settled in Aratat as legal advisers to the islanders, Chase having declined to serve longer in that capacity.
He was now waiting for the steamer which was to take him to Cape Town on his way to England—and home.