February 3, igi6. 
LAND AND WATER 
CHAYA. 
A Romance of the South Seas. 
By H. de Vere Stacpoole. 
We begin to-day one of the hist stones of adventure that has ever been mritten on the South Seas. Mr. de 
Vere Stacpoole won fame with his hmutiful tale " The Blue Lagoon." He not onlv knows, hut he makes 
fits readers realise the mystery and exquisite loveliness of those distant regions ivhcre '" every prospect pleases 
and only man is vile." — hid not all men. The story opens in Sydney. 
Macquart. 
DAY was breaking over the Domain, §lorious, gauzy 
with mist, warm and blue. 
The larrikins and loafers, drunkards and un- 
employed who had spent the night on the grass 
were scratching themselves awake. Houghton on a seat 
had ceased yawning and stretching himself. He was talking 
to a stranger, a man slightly over the middle-age who had 
slept beside him, and who was now making his toilet with a 
bit of comb, nmning it through his hair and his grizzled 
beard and talking all the time in an easy, garrulous, volumin- 
ous manner, more suggestive of long intimacy than of total 
unacquaintanceship. 
Houghton, who had awoken surly and stiff and out of 
temper with the world, was sitting now with his arm across 
the seat back, his legs crossed, and his foot swinging, listening 
to the other who was making the conversation, and wondering 
vaguely what manner of man he might be. He had never 
eetn anyone at all Uke him. 
" And the strangest thing," went on the gentleman 
with the comb, " is the fact that the off-scourings of the city 
sleep in this splendid place, fill their lungs with good air 
and wake refreshed, whilst the prosperous folk sleep in dog- 
holes — bedrooms, if you like the term better — and wake half 
poisoned by their own effluviums. But don't think I am a 
crank. Oh, dear no. When I am well off, I am just as tough 
to common sense as the rest of humanity. I sleep in a 
bedroom, eat too much, drink too much, and smoke too 
much; but between whiles as now, for instance, when I 
am driven to the simple Hfe I enjoy it, and I get a glimpse of 
what might have been if men had stuck to tents instead of 
building houses. Freedom, air, light, simplicity, great open 
spaces — those are the things that make Ufe. Yes, sir, those 
are the things that count." 
" You have been about the world a lot ? " said Hough- 
ton. 
The other, having finished his toilet, was now regarding 
his boots with a critical eye ; one of them showed a crack 
where the upper met the sole at the instep. He made this 
crack open and shut like a mouth for a moment, viewed it 
with his head on one side, and then said : i 
" Almost all over the place. North, south, east and 
west, doing almost everything that has got excitement in it. 
Living, you may say — that's the word. How old may you 
be, if it's not an impertinent question ? Twenty-three, and 
you are English, I can see that. You belong to the class they 
call in England the gentleman class, and you're out here 
sleeping with old rovers like me and all that hoggery over 
there on the grass in the Domain of Sydney, without maybe 
more than a shilling in j'our pocket. " Well, I was like you 
once, and if you keep on as you are going, you'll maybe one 
day be like me. Look at me. I am forty-seven years of 
age, or maybe forty-eight, for I've always gone by dead 
reckoning — and I haven't lost a tooth, I could digest an 
ostrich, I haven't a care in the world, and I'm always alive 
because I'm always interested. I have made three fortunes 
and lot them, Nowio you think I set out to make those for- 
tuties with a view to sitting down on the Hudson or on Nob's Hill 
or in the city of Paris or London and enjoying them ? I never 
had a view to that. I never had a view to a palace and a 
fat woman covered in diamonds for a wife, and sons and 
daughters and all such like. No, sir, I fought for money for 
the fight of the thing. Money ! I love it ; it's my dream ; 
I hunt for it like a pig for truffles, but when the durned thing 
is in my hands it turns to lead if I don't use it to make more, 
and that's what breaks me. For I'm like this, lucky as you 
like when I'm on the make adventuring in out-of-the-way 
places, but unlucky as Satan when I'm speculating. For 
instance, I made a big pile over the Klondyke and lost every 
cent m the wheat pit at Chicago. 
" 1 was going about Chicago on my uppers same as I'm 
going about Sydney now, had to accept a loan to get away, 
then I bought an i.sland." 
" You bought an island ? " 
" To speak more truly, I bought the lease of one. You 
can buy islands, mind you, and if you knew the Pacific as I 
do, you'd open your eyes at the trades that have been done 
over islands in these seas. There's Ten Stick Island, for 
instance, in the New Hebrides. It's nothing much ^ f a place, 
just a rock sticking up out of the sea. You Britishers wanted 
a target for gun practice, and they bought the durned thing 
for ten sticks of tobacco from the chief who owned it. At one 
time big fortunes were made by fellows who came along and 
picked up islands and stuck to them, shell lagoons and 
copra islands ; but nowadays the governments have all 
closed in on everything bigger than a mushroom, oven bits of 
places like Takutea and god-forsaken sand banks like Gougli 
Island have their owners. W^H. the island I came to negoti- 
ate for was in the New Hebrides. It was valuable because its 
top part was one solid block of guano. An old whaler captain 
brought news of it to me. I met him in a bar just off a cruise. 
' But Where's the use.' said ho. ' It belongs to the Australian 
Government, and at the first wind of guano they'll close 
down on it.' That was four o'clock in the afternoon, and by 
four o'clock next day I had got a syndicate together, and not 
long after we had a lease of the place for ten years for almost 
nothing. And when we got to the place to work it, it was 
gone, nothing but a vigia left. Islands go like that. King- 
man Island and Dindsay Island and a hundred others ha\-o 
ducked under, leaving only a reef a' wash or lea\-ing nothing. 
Well, there we were— done with long faces and empty puises 
— Gimme a match." 
He took out a pipe and some tobacco wrapped up in a 
scrap of the Sydney Bidklin. Houghton supplied him with 
a match and he began to smoke. 
Houghton was young for his years. He had left Oxford 
without a degree to spend two thousand pounds which came 
to him on his majority. A woman had helped him to spend 
the two thousand and had died of gallopmg consumption, 
leaving him broken and heart-broken at the same tim;; 
without a profession, with expensive tastes and no earthly 
means of making mone\' save with his hands. 
And you cannot make money with your hands in England, 
so he came to the Colonies, fell in with some bar acquaint- 
ances, risked his last penny on a horse race and lost. He had 
rooms in Sydney and some gear, but he could not pay his rent, 
he owed for board and lodging, and for the last two days had 
been living from hand to mouth. No one need starve in 
Sydney, it is the most tolerant city towards loafers in the world, 
not that Houghton was a loafer ; he was just a man without 
a job. 
He sat looking at the other for a moment, then he said, 
" My name is Houghton. I'm Enghsh, as you say. What are 
you — American ? " 
" No, sir," 'replied the stranger, " there's no American 
about me. I'm the most thoroughbred mongrel that ever 
crawled on God's green footstool and jumped for scraps. 
Macquart is my name. Simon Macquart, a prospector by 
nature and profession, and as you see me sitting here talking 
to you I don't look much, maybe, but I'm out after a fortune. 
A dead sure thing. Money enough to make a do^en men 
rich." 
He stopped short and puffed at his pipe, his eyes fixed 
away towards the sea as though the fortune had suddenly 
materialised itself and were visible. His profile seen like 
this hinted at a characterjboth daring and predatory. Remem- 
ber that a man's essential character is exhibited in his profile 
more surely than in any other outhne or combination of out- 
lines, and the character of Macquart spoke bud at that 
moment as he sat with the pipe firmly clenched i^etween his 
teeth and his eyes straining towards the distance. 
" What is it ? " said Houghton, " a mine ? " 
" Mine ! " said the other, returning from his thoughts, 
" Oh, lord no ! It's a proposition, and this very morning I 
am going to lay it before one of the biggest bags in Sydney. 
I've been carrying it about in my skull for a matter of some 
years, always hoping to be able to find money of my own to 
work it with — Couldn't. Laid hold of it first up there, 
Bomco way — never mind exactly where, reached Portuguese 
Timor and sjunded one of the biggest men there, a Dutch- 
man, he only laughed at me — d d ijit. I was so broke 
there that I had to help lading ships with copra — they've 
taken to growing cocoanut palms in Timo:. — Then I took a 
voyage to Frisco for my health, in the foc's'le. Had no lark 
in F"risco and drifted to Valdivia. Th;re I nearly had a 
chance in a loose way of business ; starte I a faro table with a 
2.3 
