‘Well! _Saiandra_, you fellows, you’ve cheered us up amazingly; don’t forget to look in on me if you’re ever fools enough to come back to this forsaken paradise. Send me that new magazine if you can get it in Sydney, Clemenson. Good-night, Mrs Hay; I know you won’t think me rude for making tracks. Look after them, Hay; see you up in court to-morrow afternoon, I suppose? Got to go round the coolie quarters in the morning. _Bon soir, la compagnie._’ He shook hands with the globe-trotters, swung himself over the verandah rails, and walked uncertainly down the narrow path that threaded the grove of shadowy palms. For a minute nobody spoke; then Clemenson said with a sigh: ‘Poor old Synge, how down he is to-night. He _is_ a good chap. I wish he’d stayed to see us off. I hate saying good-bye before it’s necessary.’ He flicked off a mosquito, and bent down to adjust the bath-towel wrapped round his feet and ankles. ‘Barring mosquitoes and flies, this is heaven, I believe,’ he went on, lying back to look up at the sky gleaming with stars through the fern-like tracery of the flamboyante trees. ‘Pardon me, under certain circumstances it’s hell,’ said a fourth voice. ‘Hay, you’re an unsentimental brute, you’ve no poetry in your carcase; ask Taplin and Mrs Hay what they think. Wake up, Taplin, old chap; hanged if you’re not sleeping away the last chance of heaven you’ll ever get.’ ‘Am I?’ grunted the latter. He was gazing intently from under the broad brim of his hat at Mrs Hay. Sitting forward in her chair, her face ashy white, she was looking with an intent, scared expression at her husband. ‘I must go, too, I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘the infant will want me; little wretch, she always cries on hot nights if she’s left long. Good-bye, Mr Clemenson; good-bye, Mr Taplin; _bon voyage_; come and see me in England when I come home next year.’ Her manner was nervous and hurried, and her face, still turned towards her husband, had not lost its scared expression. ‘You won’t be long, Jack, will you?’ With a wave of her hand she disappeared into the house. The men had all risen, their bath-towel armour, dislodged, lay in heaps on the verandah floor, and the increasing ‘Ping! Ping!’ announced a winged attack along the line. ‘I say, this _is_ a sell. I thought you and Mrs Hay were coming out to see us off; it was to have been an all-night sitting for the last, you know, and now here you are one by one deserting, and leaving us to face this abominable melancholy departure alone.’ Thus Clemenson, ruefully. Taplin lit a cigarette. ‘What’s wrong, Hay?’ he said, and pointed with it down the path. ‘Oh! It’s all right. Nothing, nothing; my wife’s tired, and the infant’s not well; that’s all.’ ‘Nonsense, man, I saw Synge’s face, and I saw your wife’s, that’s enough; I say again, what’s wrong?’ Hay leant silently against the rail, a cloud gathering upon his face.