"I get everything ready to board, but the steamer pays no attention. They go straight ahead. Maybe they think it's just natives, but at any rate they don't put about or anything. I go to the edge of the water and shout to them. I go into it up to my waist and whistle and snap my fingers and call to it, as I would to a dog, but they pay no attention. And then I give up. "'I 'm sorry, McCarthy,' Janssen says. "'What are you sorry for?' I asks her. 'You ought to be glad.' "'I am glad,' she says. 'I 'm glad for myself, but I 'm sorry for your sake, McCarthy. I 'm really sorry.' "One night we 're setting by the fire in the moonlight, and I 'm trying to figure out how the natives build their huts, because I want to build one for Janssen. There 's a queer sort of rain in these islands. Sometimes in a bright sky a cloud will pass, very high, very quick, and the rain comes down like bullets. You can hear it thunder in the leaves, and rattle over the sea like pistol shots. And it's not so pleasant after a while. It's over in a minute or so, but Janssen ought to have some place when it comes. "And Janssen is sitting there as quiet as anything, making figures in the sand and saying nothing. She turns to me. "'McCarthy,' she says, 'did I really kill Alec de Vries?' "'You killed him dead.' "'It seems like a dream to me, a bad dream in the night.' "'If you had waited and looked at that corpse, you 'd have known it was no dream.' "'And because I killed a man that was no use to any one I 've got to go back.' "'You 've got to go back, all right,' I tell her. "'Well, do you know, it's only fair,' she says. 'You 've called the tune, and danced it, and you 've got to pay the fiddler. But I 'm scared, McCarthy. I 'm terribly scared. It would be very easy for me to jump in the water or borrow your gun some night. Think of it. They put metal on your legs and strap you into a chair, and they put a cap over your head. And, then a man, as human as yourself, pushes a switch, and just as if he were putting out a light, he puts out the light of your life, the same light that's in himself.... And all in the cold gray morning....' "'Tell you something, kid--' I had this on my mind for a while. 'I don't think they 'll burn you. We 'll get you a good lawyer when we go back and you 'll get off with a long stretch up the river.' "'But don't you see, McCarthy,' she laughs nervously, 'that that's worse still? A person does something, as I 've done, because his mind and his--his self--are full of nooks and crannies, dust and cobwebs, bad feelings, passions. And he flies away. And maybe in the desert or the mountains a great wind comes and cleanses him. And he mends the shattered self together.