"And how come you in these parts anyways?" he said. "Oh, I came out to the islands for my health. My lungs were bad and they said I hadn't a year to live. You see they were wrong." "I meant, how come you to settle down right here?" "I am a sentimentalist." "Oh!" Neilson knew that the skipper had not an idea what he meant, and he looked at him with an ironical twinkle in his dark eyes. Perhaps just because the skipper was so gross and dull a man the whim seized him to talk further. "You were too busy keeping your balance to notice, when you crossed the bridge, but this spot is generally considered rather pretty." "It's a cute little house you've got here." "Ah, that wasn't here when I first came. There was a native hut, with its beehive roof and its pillars, overshadowed by a great tree with red flowers; and the croton bushes, their leaves yellow and red and golden, made a pied fence around it. And then all about were the coconut trees, as fanciful as women, and as vain. They stood at the water's edge and spent all day looking at their reflections. I was a young man then--Good Heavens, it's a quarter of a century ago--and I wanted to enjoy all the loveliness of the world in the short time allotted to me before I passed into the darkness. I thought it was the most beautiful spot I had ever seen. The first time I saw it I had a catch at my heart, and I was afraid I was going to cry. I wasn't more than twenty-five, and though I put the best face I could on it, I didn't want to die. And somehow it seemed to me that the very beauty of this place made it easier for me to accept my fate. I felt when I came here that all my past life had fallen away, Stockholm and its University, and then Bonn: it all seemed the life of somebody else, as though now at last I had achieved the reality which our doctors of philosophy--I am one myself, you know--had discussed so much. 'A year,' I cried to myself. 'I have a year. I will spend it here and then I am content to die.'" "We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren't perhaps we should be less wise at fifty." "Now drink, my friend. Don't let the nonsense I talk interfere with you." He waved his thin hand towards the bottle, and the skipper finished what remained in his glass. "You ain't drinking nothin," he said, reaching for the whisky. "I am of a sober habit," smiled the Swede. "I intoxicate myself in ways which I fancy are more subtle. But perhaps that is only vanity. Anyhow, the effects are more lasting and the results less deleterious." "They say there's a deal of cocaine taken in the States now," said the captain. Neilson chuckled. "But I do not see a white man often," he continued, "and for once I don't think a drop of whisky can do me any harm." He poured himself out a little, added some soda, and took a sip.