"'But the island had been there a long while' he objected 'It had a coral reef all the way round; our boat crossed it by a miracle that morning. And the people, Nichols—people don't rise full grown from the sea, or drop down out of the air'
"I wondered whether they didn't, in this case. 'Never mind, this was the way of it' said I 'The rock was an indication of volcanic action that hadn't yet extended to the island. But the whole area was in danger, and the next outbreak, which happened to be one of depression, dragged down the island, too'
"We left the question pending, and went our various ways. Now and then I'd run into him, wandering about the world, as the years went by. He's never wholly given up the search. The singular thing about it is that material fortune has fairly pursued him. He's made a lot of money, and sunk it all in fruitless expeditions. Too bad it is that he didn't possess a scientific bent; he knows all there is to know of the Pacific islands on their practical side—that is, on the side that isn't worth knowing"
Nichols struck the table again. "Well, what do you think of it?" he demanded "There he goes, now—alone, always alone. Why was he sent back to us? What's his obscure moral? Do you get any hint?"
"Nichols, do you yourself believe in the reality of this island?" I asked.
He glanced at me keenly. "Isn't that wholly beside the point?" said he "I don't believe the island exists to-day, if that is what you mean. But there's a year in an open boat, back at the beginning of the record, to be explained. The point is that he believes in the island. By Jove, he remembers it—do you understand? See that droop in his back, as he stands absently looking out of the door? He's growing old, and the woman would be past middle age to-day, and the boy would be a man; but they have a trick of remaining young in his memory. Oh, he faces the fact, of course, in his practical moments; wonders what they have come to, whether the boy ever matured, whether the woman waited, or gave him up for lost and married another man. He can speak about these things, because he's quite determined to believe that the island is sunk under the ocean, that they're all dead. But when the moon's out, and he gets to dreaming, they come back to him just as he left them, a young and beautiful woman with a child at her breast, both of them perfectly alive. How can you ask me ... whether I believe in the island?"
IV
The day following this conversation, Nichols introduced me to Devereux; I met and talked with him several times before I left Hong Kong. If he was mad, the fact didn't affect his daily intercourse. He was a man of charming personality; a man who held something back, of course, but this merely added interest to the charm. Only his eyes were strange; as he talked, they invariably wandered upward, and were recalled to the scene in intermittent sharp flashes.
Then I left Hong Kong, and forgot all about him for a couple of years. At the end of that time I found myself in Batavia on business, when who should arrive but Nichols in the barque Omega. I left a message for him at his broker's, and that evening he called on me at the hotel. Already, I had determined to ask him for a passage north.
"But it'll take me a couple of months to reach Hong Kong" he told me "I'm going from here to Macassar, then on up the straights to Cebu and Iloilo"