And, in looking back, that old gent of the South Sea Organization seems to stand out, not so much as a wicked, eccentric individual, as he does of a type that represents nine-tenths of the men whom one is doomed to knock up against in one’s pilgrimage along this shore of hope and sudden chills, wrecks, and buffeted dreams.
I know that that old man came to us in the guise of a benefactor who would bestow wealth on O’Hara and on me, whereas he turned out to be a Nemesis wrapt up in the vilest disguise, a Nemesis who seemed to take some vindictive delight in the frailties of youth, and was guilty of unwarrantable cruelty to a child’s innocence. I have sometimes thought that neither he, nor the Organization itself, ever existed in this world as men know things to exist; that I once lived in a phantasmagorial world of ghostly sunlight and shadow that was haunted by an aged man who wore side-whiskers, clung to my back like an Old Man of the Sea, and successfully throttled my faith in supreme goodness. It was our lack of funds and the old man’s abundant wealth that brought the whole business about. And, though I know that the lack of funds on the one side and an abundance of funds on the other side has brought about the direst disasters beneath the sun, still, I feel that the sorrow that came to us through that old fellow is worth recording.
I think it was the very next day that O’Hara and I saw our chance of luring the old gentleman away from the Organization to see if he was really in earnest about that fifty pounds he said he would give to the first one who got him safely away. In the little that we had seen of him we observed that he was weak where native girls and dancing-women were concerned. When O’Hara had acquainted him with the fact that there was a great tribal-dance on down in the village of Takarora, that the chiefs were going to pow-wow and the _meke-girls_ eat fire and dance, he took hold of our hands, and begged us to take him to see the sight.
“I’ve read a bit about these people in books, but, dear boys, I’d really like to see the grandeur of primitive life in the natural state.” So spake that old man. Then off we went, with the old gent in our company, down the forest track.