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that trick in the wilderness, to loaf on the outskirts of the virgin forest.
    “He understood how to ingratiate himself with the natives.  He would arrive in some settlement up a river, make a present of a cheap carbine or a pair of shoddy binoculars, or something of that sort, to the Rajah, or the head-man, or the principal trader; and on the strength of that gift, ask for a house, posing mysteriously as a very special trader.  He would spin them no end of yarns, live on the fat of the land, for a while, and then do some mean swindle or other — or else they would get tired of him and ask him to quit.  And he would go off meekly with an air of injured innocence.  Funny life.  Yet, he never got hurt somehow.  I’ve heard of the Rajah of Dongala giving him fifty dollars’ worth of trade goods and paying his passage in a prau only to get rid of him.  Fact.  And observe that nothing prevented the old fellow having Bamtz’s throat cut and the carcase thrown into deep water outside the reefs; for who on earth would have inquired after Bamtz?
    “He had been known to loaf up and down the wilderness as far north as the Gulf of Tonkin.  Neither did he disdain a spell of civilisation from time to time.  And it was while loafing and cadging in Saigon, bearded and dignified (he gave himself out there as a bookkeeper), that he came across Laughing Anne.
    “The less said of her early history the better, but something must be said.  We may safely suppose there was very little heart left in her famous laugh when Bamtz spoke first to her in some low café.  She was stranded in Saigon with precious little money and in great trouble about a kid she had, a boy of five or six.
    “A fellow I just remember, whom they called Pearler Harry, brought her out first into these parts — from Australia, I believe.  He brought her out and then dropped her, and she remained knocking about here and there, known to most of us by sight, at any rate.  Everybody in the Archipelago had heard of Laughing Anne.  She had really a pleasant silvery laugh always at her disposal, so to speak, but it wasn’t enough apparently to make her fortune.  The poor creature was ready to stick to any half-decent man if he would only let her, but she always got dropped, as it might have been expected.
    “She had been left in Saigon by the skipper of a German ship with whom she had been going up and down the China coast as far as Vladivostok for near upon two years.  The German said to her: ‘This is all over, mein Taubchen.  I am going home now to get married to the girl I got engaged to before coming out here.’  And Anne said: ‘All right, I’m ready to go.  We part friends, don’t we?’
    “She was always anxious to part friends.  The German told her that of course they were parting friends.  He looked rather glum at the moment of parting.  She laughed and went ashore.
    “But it was no laughing matter for her.  She had some notion that this would be her last chance.  What frightened her most was the future of her child.  She had left her boy in Saigon before going off with the German, in the care of an elderly French couple.  The husband was a doorkeeper in some Government office, but his time was up, and they were returning to France.  She had to take the boy back from them; and after she had got him back, she did not like to part with him any more.
    “That was the situation when she and Bamtz got acquainted casually.  She could not have had any illusions about that fellow.  To pick up with Bamtz was coming down pretty low in the world, even from a material point of view.  She had always been decent, in her way; whereas Bamtz was, not to mince words, an abject sort of creature.  On the other hand, that bearded loafer, who looked much more like a pirate than a bookkeeper, was not a brute.  He was gentle — rather — even in his cups.  And then, despair, like misfortune, makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows.  For she may well have despaired.  She was no longer young — you know.
    “On the man’s side this conjunction is more difficult to explain, perhaps.  One thing, however, must be said of Bamtz; he had always kept clear of native women.  As one can’t suspect him of moral delicacy, I surmise that it must have been from prudence.  And he, too, was no longer young.  There were many white hairs in his valuable black beard by then.  He may have simply longed for some kind of companionship in his