Over the smooth rollers of the Banda Sea she bowled southward on the east monsoon, steadily rising the low hills of Aru to the east. By midafternoon she had come off Dobbo, the principal pearl port of the Aru Islands, and the captain altered her course slightly, heading for the coast of Kobror, the wildest of the two great mainlands of Aru. Out of the coral reefs that surround the harbor of Dobbo put forth a long, black canoe. Her crew of naked blacks foamed up the water in spats of spray with their paddles, singing and shouting as they came. Up in her high carved prow sat a white man, dressed in the cottons of the equatorial tropics, with a Japanese-bowl hat sheltering his head from the sun. He rose and waved them a greeting as his canoe drew near. “Proa ahoy! I say, are you there, Baldwin?” he shouted. “I’m going on to Kobror with you.” “Hello, Bentham! That’s fine, old man! Come right aboard and we’ll have tiffin.... Did you get my letter? These mail steamers only touch Aru about once in a dog’s age, they tell me. How are you, old new-chum?” greeted the curator, grasping Bentham’s hand as the canoe shot alongside and her crew of mop-haired Papuans leaped aboard to mingle with their own crew. “How am I, dea-rr man? My word! Rippin’! Yes, I got your letter, doncherknow. Have a bungalow for you; I fancy it’s more or less done in, but it’s out in the jungle, as you wanted,” he replied, shaking hands heartily. “It was mighty good of you, Bentham!” thanked the curator. “We’ll fix it up and make it our headquarters while down here. We’re stopping on Kobror a day or so after paradise birds.” He turned to introduce Dwight and Nicky, who had been studying Bentham curiously. The bold, independent swagger of the Australian was written in every line of his sunburnt face. He was the representative of the Aru pearl company, the curator had told them, sole white man in a whole group of islands peopled by native black savages. They led the pearl trader to their house on deck, where the Javanese cook served tiffin. It was a cozy little retreat, about ten feet square by perhaps six high, and was built of bamboo arches thatched with palm-leaf attap. Its floor was raised some six inches above the wet deck by springy bamboo poles laid side by side, and the thatch walls were lined with fragrant sandalwood boxes, which also served for bunks. Bentham was pathetically glad to see them, eager to talk and talk of the war and the world’s doings, with all the pensive loneliness of a white man condemned to months and months of existence with no other associates than Papuan natives and Chinese traders. The curator and the boys filled him up with news to his heart’s content. Just to hear their voices in the good old mother tongue once more, to feel their keen minds sympathetic with his own, was pleasure enough, and Bentham basked luxuriantly in it. “Where to next, after Kobror, Baldwin?” he asked, after a pause in the flow of news.