260 MYSTIC ISLES 



the Kid. " 'E 'as a grudge against any one who speaks 

 Enghsh and also against the world. They s'y that 'is 

 American wife ran aw'y from 'im, or an American took 

 'is nytive wife aw'y. 'E packs a revolver." 



Everj^iere the mountain-side was terraced, and 

 planted in cocoanuts, breadfruits, bananas, flowers, and 

 other plants, more than two thousand growths. Dar- 

 ling's toil had been great, and my heart bled at the 

 memory of his standing on the piling as we steamed 

 away. He had intended to have a colony, with bare 

 nature-worshipers from all over the world. He had 

 wTitten articles in magazines, and tourists and authors 

 had celebrated him in their stories. A score of needy 

 health-seekers had arrived in Papeete and joined him, 

 but could not survive his rigid diet and work. He had 

 talked much of Eves, white, in the Eden, but none had 

 offered. 



On a platform fifteen hundred feet above the sea 

 Darling had built a frame of beams, boards, and 

 branches, with bunks and seats, much like a woodcut- 

 ter's temporary shelter in the mountains, a mere lean- 

 to. • The view was stupendous, with the sea, the harbor, 

 Moorea, and Papeete hardly seen in the foliage. He 

 had thought his work in life to be peopling these hills 

 with big famihes of nature children and the spread of 

 socialism and reformed spelling. 



His dream was transient. He had been treated with 

 contempt, and had been driven from his garden, as had 

 his first father, and without an Eve or a serpent. The 

 whiskered Frenchman had bought Eden for a song, and 

 had made it taboo to all. 



We shouted in vain for the Frenchman, so we 



