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However, it was admitted that Seibert knew more about tropical agriculture than any other planter, and more persistently than any of the planters cleared out the jungle. Waller, with a sombre air of triumph, frequently said that he would live to see Seibert ruin himself because he raised flowers and shrubs, experimented with cotton, tried coffee, grapes, planted corn and cane, and much else besides cocoanuts, which Waller almost fiercely maintained was the only thing that the island was good for.

But Waller's prophecy tragically failed him. While riding on a slippery slope he had a fall that carried the horse and himself, beast over man, down a mountain-side.

Natives plaited a hammock between two poles and carried him along trails and through groves of his own planting to the barracks of a house (he thought it a mansion) where he and the Combes lived, in great rooms that seemed half empty because they were much too large for their furniture.

The only physician on the island, Dr. Lemaitre, expected Waller to die any minute. At the Pulotu Club, where idlers gathered to drink warm champagne, Dr. Lemaitre who was short and rather stout, vowed with excited emphasis that every bone between knees and neck was broken. Yet Waller lived on, day after day. Combe and his wife, the dainty, dark, and now sad Aiana, moved in helpless distress about his bedroom.