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“How did you come there?” I asked,–“if it’s a fair question.”

He chuckled without mirth. “As it happens, that’s not a fair question. But I’ll tell you this much, I came there with a brass band.”

I began to think the man out of his mind.

“With the instruments, that is. I’d dropped the bandmaster on the way. Look here,” he went on sharply, “the beginning is funny enough, but I’m telling you no lies. We’ll suppose there was a ship, a British man-of-war–name not necessary just now.”

“I think I understand,” I nodded.

“Oh no, you don’t,” said he. “I’m not a deserter–at least not exactly–or I shouldn’t be telling this to you. Well, we’ll suppose this ship bound from Labuan to Hong-Kong with orders to keep along the north side of Borneo, to start with, and do a bit of exploring by the way. This would be in ‘forty-nine, when the British Government had just taken over Labuan. Very good. Next we’ll suppose the captain puts in at Kudat, in Marudu Bay, to pay a polite call on the Rajah there or some understrapper of the Sultan’s, and takes his ship’s band ashore by way of compliment, and that the band gets too drunk to play ‘Annie Laurie.'” He chuckled again. “I never saw such a band as we were, down by the water’s edge; and O’Hara, the bandmaster, took on and played the fool to such a tune, while we waited for the boat to take us aboard, that for the very love I bore him I had to knock him down and sit on him in a quiet corner.

“While I sat keeping guard on him I must have dropped asleep myself; for the next I remember was waking up to find the beach deserted and the boat gone. This put me in a sweat, of course; but after groping some while about the foreshore (which was as dark as the inside of your hat), I tripped over a rope and so found a native boat. O’Hara wouldn’t wake, so I just lifted him on board like a sack, tossed in his cornet and my bombardon, tumbled in on top of them, and started to row for dear life towards the ship’s light in the offing.

“But the Rajah, or rather his servants, had filled us up with a kind of sticky drink that only begins to work when you think it about time to leave off. I must have pulled miles towards that ship, and every time I cast an eye over my shoulder her light was shining just as far away as ever. At last I remember feeling sure I was bewitched, and with that I must have tumbled off the thwart in a sound sleep.

“When I awoke I had both arms round the bombardon; there wasn’t a sight of land, or of the ship, anywhere; and, if you please, the sun was near sinking! This time I managed to wake up O’Hara. We had splitting headaches, the pair of us; but we snatched up our instruments and started to blow on them like mad. Not a soul heard, though we blew till the sweat poured down us, and kept up the concert pretty well all through the night. You may think it funny, and I suppose we did amount to something like a joke–we two bandsmen booming away at the Popular Airs of Old England and the Huntsmen’s Chorus under those everlasting stars. You wouldn’t say so, if you had been the audience when O’Hara broke down and began to confess his sins.

“Luckily the sea kept smooth, and next morning I took the oars in earnest. We had no compass, and I was famished; but I stuck to it, steering by the sun and pulling in the direction where I supposed land to lie. O’Hara kept a look-out. We saw nothing, however, and down came the night again.