"I pulled myself together, started across the patch of open ground, and came into the moonlight. When I’d reached a little nearer, I saw him standing at the rail of the verandah; he leaned out, showing his face—a good deal older than I remembered, but unmistakeably the face of my vanished friend. "’Who is it?’ he asked again, sharply now, for he had discovered that it was a man. "I felt the need of making an excuse for introduction. ’Bert’ said I ’I haven’t been following your trail. It’s just an amazing stroke of chance. That is my ship in the roadstead. I happened to call. "He leaned out farther, a look of helpless bewilderment on his face. Then recognition dawned with a great rush. ’Nichols!’ he cried desperately. Gazing at me wide-eyed, he repeated my name in a lower tone, in accents of simple wonder. Suddenly, as he gazed, the weight of the years seemed to strike him with a crushing force; he crumpled, dropped to his knees, and buried his face on the railing. When I took his hand, he gripped me like a vice. We didn’t speak for a long time. *IV* "After I’d sent my boat back aboard, with orders to come ashore for me in the morning, we sat talking on the verandah till late in the night. Ten years of life had to be reconstructed; the astonishing thing was that I had found him even then. ’Of all places on earth’ I asked ’how did you happen to land in this God-forsaken spot?’ "’Oh, I came up from Australia, about eight months ago’ said he ’A friend of mine down there, a sea captain, told me about it; said the bungalow was vacant and could be had almost for the asking. It’s quiet here, and yet a fellow sees ships and things—watches life go by’ He had been pacing backward and forward, and now stopped in front of my chair. ’It’s heaven!’ he cried ’Nothing to raise a row, nothing to fight for, nothing to live for, much.... Nothing to bother—that is.... You can’t imagine how quiet and peaceful it seems’ "His words confirmed the impression I’d always had of his disappearance; yet, even in the midst of his hopelessness I seemed to detect a note of hesitation, something concealed from me—perhaps concealed from him, for he rarely analyzed his own reactions. I led him away from his story for a while, trying to fix the status of his existence. We talked of old times; he remembered them keenly, kept citing queer details, jests that used to amuse us, chance remarks that seemed to have lodged in his mind. Almost at once, his infectious laugh came into play. The old spirit was unquenchable. By Jove, the man wasn’t half so hopeless as he would have himself believe.... I took my eyes away from him, looked around at the jungle rising against the hills; and all at once it struck me how closely he resembled, in essential nature, the land he’d stumbled on. A land full of the instinct of beauty, the gift of love; weary, too, and wise with age, yet fired with the undying youth of quick vitality.