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“Jim,” said Hatteras, starting up, “I’ve got a year’s leave; I am going home.”

“Dicky!” cried Walker, and he nearly wrung Hatteras’ hand from his arm. “That’s grand news.”

“Yes, old man, I thought you would be glad; I sail in a fortnight.” And he did.

For the first month Walker was glad. A year’s leave would make a new man of Dick Hatteras, he thought, or, at all events, restore the old man, sane and sound, as he had been before he came to the West African coast. During the second month Walker began to feel lonely. In the third he bought a banjo and learnt it during the fourth and fifth. During the sixth he began to say to himself, “What a time poor Dick must have had all those six years with those cursed forests about him. I don’t wonder–I don’t wonder.” He turned disconsolately to his banjo and played for the rest of the year; all through the wet season while the rain came down in a steady roar and only the curlews cried–until Hatteras returned. He returned at the top of his spirits and health. Of course he was hall-marked West African, but no man gets rid of that stamp. Moreover there was more than health in his expression. There was a new look of pride in his eyes and when he spoke of a bachelor it was in terms of sympathetic pity.

“Jim,” said he, after five minutes of restraint, “I am engaged to be married.”

Jim danced round him in delight. “What an ass I have been,” he thought, “why didn’t I think of that cure myself?” and he asked, “When is it to be?”

“In eight months. You’ll come home and see me through.”

Walker agreed and for eight months listened to praises of the lady. There were no more solitary expeditions. In fact, Hatteras seemed absorbed in the diurnal discovery of new perfections in his future wife.

“Yes, she seems a nice girl,” Walker commented. He found her upon his arrival in England more human than Hatteras’ conversation had led him to expect, and she proved to him that she was a nice girl. For she listened for hours to him lecturing her on the proper way to treat Dick without the slightest irritation and with only a faintly visible amusement. Besides she insisted on returning with her husband to Bonny river, which was a sufficiently courageous thing to undertake.

For a year in spite of the climate the couple were commonplace and happy. For a year Walker clucked about them like a hen after its chickens and slept the sleep of the untroubled. Then he returned to England and from that time made only occasional journeys to West Africa. Thus for awhile he almost lost sight of Hatteras and consequently still slept the sleep of the untroubled. One morning, however, he arrived unexpectedly at the settlement and at once called on Hatteras. He did not wait to be announced, but ran up the steps outside the house and into the dining-room. He found Mrs. Hatteras crying. She dried her eyes, welcomed Walker, and said that she was sorry, but her husband was away.

Walker started, looked at her eyes, and asked hesitatingly whether he could help. Mrs. Hatteras replied with an ill-assumed surprise that she did not understand. Walker suggested that there was trouble. Mrs. Hatteras denied the truth of the suggestion. Walker pressed the point and Mrs. Hatteras yielded so far as to assert that there was no trouble in which Hatteras was concerned. Walker hardly thought it the occasion for a parade of manners, and insisted on pointing out that his knowledge of her husband was intimate and dated from his schooldays. Thereupon Mrs. Hatteras gave way.

“Dick goes away alone,” she said. “He stains his skin and goes away at night. He tells me that he must, that it’s the only way by which he can know the natives, and that so it’s a sort of duty. He says the black tells nothing of himself to the white man–ever. You must go amongst them if you are to know them. So he goes, and I never know when he will come back. I never know whether he will come back.”