"The air was hot and heavy that evening—one of those nights of threatening showers that never come. After supper, I had settled myself morosely in a deck-chair; it seemed quite unaccountable not to be going ashore in this familiar situation. The moon was high and full above the hills, as it is to-night, but clouded by a faint mist like descending veils of dew. The ship seemed resting after the long passage; on the forecastle-head a couple of men were singing, accompanied by an old accordion. Across the water, as if in answer, floated the voices of natives somewhere in the jungle, lifted in wild and startling melodies. The same breeze fanned down from the land—the breeze that seems always to be blowing here in the early evening, filling the straits with the overpowering sweetness of bloom and decay. "It must have been quite late—the moon had risen overhead, and the singing had died out forward and ashore—when I first noticed lights in the old consulate bungalow. I at once thought of the stranger whom Sa-lee had mentioned. Who could he be? What misanthrope had chosen that house of solitude for his habitation? How did he manage to pass the time? It went without saying that he was a European; Sa-lee would not have mentioned him otherwise. I kept my eye on the light, which seemed to travel about, vanishing now and then as if behind a closed door. As I watched, my interest became more and more awakened. I began to imagine all sorts of people in that bungalow; a tremendous failure, a fellow who’d fled from the wreck of a tragic past; an exile, for some romantic reason or other, who had seen my ship in the offing, had hurried home, and was making ready for a visit, longing for the sight of a strange face and a word from the outside world; a criminal, who feared my presence in the roadstead, who was even now busy concealing evidence, sweeping tables, locking drawers. "Suddenly it occurred to me to go ashore and satisfy my curiosity. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I called my mate. ’Mr. Hunter’ said I ’send some men aft and throw the dingey overboard. Then haul her up to the side-ladder’ "Handling the tiller-ropes of the dingey, with two men rowing, I directed her bow toward Reardon’s old landing. Under the hills the land loomed high. You know that feeling of strangeness, of transmutation, which comes at the end of a voyage at sea, when for the first time you step from the ship’s deck into a small boat, when you look across the water from a lower level, see the shore approach, and hear the hum of waves on a beach close at hand. There’s a trace almost of apprehension mingled with it, the instinct of the sailor warning him of shallow water and danger in proximity. I felt it, a nameless tingling excitement; besides, I had by this time worked myself to quite a pitch of fancy over Sa-lee’s stranger.