No good ever came of coddling. A man has to stand up in God's sight

and work up to his weight avoirdupois; then I'll talk to him, but not

before. I gave these beggars what they wanted: a judge in Israel, the

bearer of the sword and scourge; I was making a new people here; and

behold, the angel of the Lord smote them and they were not!'

With the very uttering of the words, which were accompanied by a

gesture, they came forth out of the porch of the palm wood by the margin

of the sea and full in front of the sun which was near setting. Before

them the surf broke slowly. All around, with an air of imperfect wooden

things inspired with wicked activity, the crabs trundled and scuttled

into holes. On the right, whither Attwater pointed and abruptly turned,

was the cemetery of the island, a field of broken stones from the

bigness of a child's hand to that of his head, diversified by many

mounds of the same material, and walled by a rude rectangular enclosure.

Nothing grew there but a shrub or two with some white flowers; nothing

but the number of the mounds, and their disquieting shape, indicated the

presence of the dead.

'The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!'

quoted Attwater as he entered by the open gateway into that unholy

close. 'Coral to coral, pebbles to pebbles,' he said, 'this has been the

main scene of my activity in the South Pacific. Some were good, and some

bad, and the majority (of course and always) null. Here was a fellow,

now, that used to frisk like a dog; if you had called him he came like

an arrow from a bow; if you had not, and he came unbidden, you should

126

The Ebb-Tide