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But of the wanderer Farquharson he spoke with precision and authority, for he had shared with Farquharson his bungalow there in Muloa a period of about six months, it seemed and there Farquharson had contracted a tropic fever and died. "Well, at last we have got all the facts," Major Stanleigh sighed with satisfaction when the Sylph was heading back to Port Charlotte.
Joyce still standing by the rail, her hand nestling within the arm of her husband, indifferent to the heavy grayish dust that fell in benediction upon her like a silent shower of snow. The island of Muloa remains to-day a charred cinder lapped about by the blue Pacific. At times gulls circle over its blackened and desolate surface devoid of every vestige of life.
We were aground in what should have been clear water, with the forest-clad shore of Muloa lying close off to port. The helmsman turned to me with a look of silly fright on his face, as the wheel revolved useless in his hands.
"It was almost disaster. After meeting Mr. Joyce and I was weak enough to let myself become engaged to have discovered that I was still chained to a living creature like that.... I should have killed myself." "But surely the courts " She shook her head with decision. "My church does not recognize that sort of freedom." We were drawing steadily nearer to Muloa.
We reached Muloa just before nightfall, letting go the anchor in placid water under the lee of the shore while the Sylph swung to and the sails fluttered and fell. A vast hush lay over the world. From the shore the dark green of the forest confronted us with no sound or sign of life.
We were aground in what should have been clear water, with the forest-clad shore of Muloa lying close off to port. The helmsman turned to me with a look of silly fright on his face, as the wheel revolved useless in his hands.
Three days in Muloa, under the shadow of the grim and flame-throated mountain, while I was forced to listen to Major Stanleigh's persistent questionnaire and Leavitt's erratic and garrulous responses all this, as I was to discover later, at the instigation of the Major's niece had made me frankly curious about the girl.
In my capacity as owner of the Sylph I had merely undertaken to furnish Major Stanleigh with passage to Muloa and back, but the events of the last three days had made me a party to the many conferences, and I was now on terms of something like intimacy with the rather stiff and pompous English gentleman.
He had discussed everything under heaven in his brilliant, erratic way, with a fleer of cynicism toward it all, but he had left himself out completely. He had given us Farquharson with relish, and in infinite detail, from the time the poor fellow first turned up in Muloa, put ashore by a native craft. Talking about Farquharson was second only to his delight in talking about volcanoes.
The island offered an ideal retreat for one bent on shunning his own kind, if he did not object to the close proximity of a restive volcano. Clearly, Leavitt did not. He had a scientific interest in the phenomena exhibited by volcanic regions and was versed in geological lore, but the rumours about Leavitt practically no one ever visited Muloa did not stop at that.
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