“‘Seen him? Cute little customer,” said the reformed loafer in such a tone of interest as to surprise Davidson into a kindly glance.

“‘I certainly can do it,” he declared. Anne went a little distance down the path with him, talking anxiously.

“‘It’s for the kid. How could I have kept him with me if I had to knock about in towns? Here he will never know that his mother was a painted woman. And that Bamtz likes him. He’s real fond of him. I suppose I ought to thank God for that.…”

‘Davidson attempted a veiled warning as to Bamtz, but she interrupted him. She knew what men were. She knew what this man was like. But he had taken wonderfully to the kid. And Davidson desisted willingly, saying to himself that surely poor Laughing Anne could have no illusions by this time. She wrung his hand hard at parting.

“‘It’s for the kid, Davy. It’s for the kid. Isn’t he a bright little chap?”

‘All this happened about two years before the day when Davidson, sitting in this very room, talked to my friend. You will see presently how this room can get full. Every seat’ll be occupied, and, as you notice, the tables are set close, so that the backs of the chairs are almost touching. There is also a good deal of noisy talk here about one o’clock.

‘I don’t suppose Davidson was talking very loudly, but very likely he had to raise his voice across the table to my friend. And here accident, mere accident, put in its work by providing a pair of fine ears close behind Davidson’s chair. It was ten to one against the owner of the same having enough change in his pockets to get his tiffin here. But he had. Most likely had rooked somebody of a few dollars at cards over night. He was a bright creature of the name of Fector, a spare, short, jumpy fellow with a red face and muddy eyes. He described himself as a journalist, as certain kind of women give themselves out as actresses when in the dock of a police court. It’s not likely that he overheard every word that Davidson said, but he heard enough about the dollars to set his wits at work.

‘He let Davidson go out and then hastened away himself down to the native slums to a sort of lodging- house kept in partnership by the usual sort of Portuguese and a very disreputable Chinaman. Macao Hotel, it was called, but it was mostly a gambling den that one used to warn fellows against. Perhaps you remember.

‘There he had met a precious couple, a partnership even more queer than the Portuguese and the Chinaman. One of the two was Niclaus—you know. Why! The fellow with a Tartar mustache and a yellow complexion, like a Mongolian, only that his eyes were set straight and his features were European. One couldn’t tell what breed he was. A nondescript beggar. From a certain angle you would think a very bilious white man. And I dare say he was. He owned a Malay prau and called himself The Nakhoda, as one would say: The Captain. Aha! now you remember. He couldn’t apparently speak any other language than English, but he flew the Dutch flag on his prau.^*

‘The other was the Frenchman without hands. Yes. The very same we used to know in ’79 in Sydney, keeping a little tobacco shop at the lower end of George Street. You remember the huge carcass hunched up behind the counter, the big white face and the long black hair brushed back off a high forehead like a bard’s. He was always rolling cigarettes on his knee with his stumps, telling endless yarns of Polynesia and whining and cursing in turns about “mon malheur.”^* His hands had been blown away by a dynamite cartridge while fishing in some lagoon. This accident, I believe, had made him more wicked than before, which is saying a good deal. No one knew then that he had fastened himself on Niclaus and was living in his prau. I daresay he put Niclaus up to a thing or two.

‘That very evening the three of them departed on a visit to Bamtz in Niclaus’s prau. They must have passed under the bows of the Sissie, and no doubt looked at her with interest as the scene of their future exploit.