drink down his throat, and rushed out. His disappearance removed
the spell of wonder from the beholders. One of the men jumped up

and moved quickly to that side of the verandah from which almost
the whole of the roadstead could be seen. At the very moment when

Jasper, issuing from the door of the Orange House, was passing
under him in the street below, he cried to the others excitedly:

"That was Allen right enough! But where is his brig?"
Jasper heard these words with extraordinaryloudness. The heavens

rang with them, as if calling him to account; for those were the
very words Freya would have to use. It was an annihilating

question; it struck his consciousness like a thunderbolt and
brought a sudden night upon the chaos of his thoughts even as he

walked. He did not check his pace. He went on in the darkness for
another three strides, and then fell.

The good Mesman had to push on as far as the hospital before he
found him. The doctor there talked of a slight heatstroke.

Nothing very much. Out in three days. . . . It must be admitted
that the doctor was right. In three days, Jasper Allen came out of

the hospital and became visible to the town - very visible indeed -
and remained so for quite a long time; long enough to become almost

one of the sights of the place; long enough to become disregarded
at last; long enough for the tale of his haunting visibility to be

remembered in the islands to this day.
The talk on the "front" and Jasper's appearance in the Orange House

stand at the beginning of the famous Bonito case, and give a view
of its two aspects - the practical and the psychological. The case

for the courts and the case for passion" target="_blank" title="n.同情；怜悯">compassion; that last terribly
evident and yet obscure.

It has, you must understand, remained obscure even for that friend
of mine who wrote me the letter mentioned in the very first lines

of this narrative. He was one of those in Mr. Mesman's office, and
accompanied that gentleman in his search for Jasper. His letter

described to me the two aspects and some of the episodes of the
case. Heemskirk's attitude was that of deep thankfulness for not

having lost his own ship, and that was all. Haze over the land was
his explanation of having got so close to Tamissa reef. He saved

his ship, and for the rest he did not care. As to the fat gunner,
he deposed simply that he thought at the time that he was acting

for the best by letting go the tow-rope, but admitted that he was
greatly confused by the suddenness of the emergency.

As a matter of fact, he had acted on very precise instructions from
Heemskirk, to whom through several years' service together in the

East he had become a sort of devoted henchman. What was most
amazing in the detention of the Bonito was his story how,

proceeding to take possession of the firearms as ordered, he
discovered that there were no firearms on board. All he found in

the fore-cabin was an empty rack for the proper number of eighteen
rifles, but of the rifles themselves never a single one anywhere in

the ship. The mate of the brig, who looked rather ill and behaved
excitedly, as though he were perhaps a lunatic, wanted him to

believe that Captain Allen knew nothing of this; that it was he,
the mate, who had recently sold these rifles in the dead of night

to a certain person up the river. In proof of this story he
produced a bag of silver dollars and pressed it on his, the

gunner's, acceptance. Then, suddenly flinging it down on the deck,
he beat his own head with both his fists and started heaping

shocking curses upon his own soul for an ungrateful wretch not fit
to live.

All this the gunner reported at once to his commanding officer.
What Heemskirk intended by taking upon himself to detain the Bonito

it is difficult to say, except that he meant to bring some trouble
into the life of the man favoured by Freya. He had been looking at

Jasper with a desire to strike that man of kisses and embraces to
the earth. The question was: How could he do it without giving

himself away? But the report of the gunner created a serious case
enough. Yet Allen had friends - and who could tell whether he

wouldn't somehow succeed in wriggling out of it? The idea of
simply towing the brig so much compromised on to the reef came to

him while he was listening to the fat gunner in his cabin. There
was but little risk of being disapproved now. And it should be

made to appear an accident.
Going out on deck he had gloated upon his unconsciousvictim with

such a sinister roll of his eyes, such a queerly pursed mouth, that
Jasper could not help smiling. And the lieutenant had gone on the

bridge, saying to himself:
"You wait! I shall spoil the taste of those sweet kisses for you.

When you hear of Lieutenant Heemskirk in the future that name won't
bring a smile on your lips, I swear. You are delivered into my

hands."
And this possibility had come about without any planning, one could

almost say naturally, as if events had mysteriously" target="_blank" title="ad.神秘地；故弄玄虚地">mysteriously shaped
themselves to fit the purposes of a dark passion. The most astute

scheming could not have served Heemskirk better. It was given to
him to taste a transcendental, an incredibleperfection of

vengeance; to strike a deadly blow into that hated person's heart,
and to watch him afterwards walking about with the dagger in his

breast.
For that is what the state of Jasper amounted to. He moved, acted,

weary-eyed, keen-faced, lank and restless, with brusque movements
and fierce gestures; he talked incessantly in a frenzied and

fatigued voice, but within himself he knew that nothing would ever
give him back the brig, just as nothing can heal a pierced heart.

His soul, kept quiet in the stress of love by the unflinching
Freya's influence, was like a still but overwound string. The

shock had started it vibrating, and the string had snapped. He had
waited for two years in a perfectly intoxicated confidence for a

day that now would never come to a man disarmed for life by the
loss of the brig, and, it seemed to him, made unfit for love to

which he had no foothold to offer.
Day after day he would traverse the length of the town, follow the

coast, and, reaching the point of land opposite that part of the
reef on which his brig lay stranded, look steadily across the water

at her beloved form, once the home of an exulting hope, and now, in
her inclined, desolated immobility, towering above the lonely sea-

horizon, a symbol of despair.
The crew had left her in due course in her own boats which directly

they reached the town were sequestrated by the harbour authorities.
The vessel, too, was sequestrated pending proceedings; but these

same authorities did not take the trouble to set a guard on board.
For, indeed, what could move her from there? Nothing, unless a

miracle; nothing, unless Jasper's eyes, fastened on her tensely for
hours together, as though he hoped by the mere power of vision to

draw her to his breast.
All this story, read in my friend's very chatty letter, dismayed me

not a little. But it was really appalling to read his relation of
how Schultz, the mate, went about everywhere affirming with

desperate pertinacity that it was he alone who had sold the rifles.
"I stole them," he protested. Of course, no one would believe him.

My friend himself did not believe him, though he, of course,
admired this self-sacrifice. But a good many people thought it was

going too far to make oneself out a thief for the sake of a friend.
Only, it was such an obvious lie, too, that it did not matter,

perhaps.
I, who, in view of Schultz's psychology, knew how true that must

be, admit that I was appalled. So this was how a perfidious
destiny took advantage of a generous impulse! And I felt as though

I were an accomplice in this perfidy, since I did to a certain
extent encourage Jasper. Yet I had warned him as well.

"The man seemed to have gone crazy on this point," wrote my friend.
"He went to Mesman with his story. He says that some rascally

white man living amongst the natives up that river made him drunk
with some gin one evening, and then jeered at him for never having