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Black boys from the plantation, with horses, chains, and a couple of wagons, were brought down to the wharf's edge. Combe stood about helplessly, while idling bystanders said what should be done. The boys did little, and that sulkily. There was chattering, insult, and ironical advice.

Adolph Seibert chanced to ride down to the beach on his grey stallion. For his personal use he had big stallions; his weight would soon have injured any but a powerful horse, for he was a heavy man, with a chest like a barrel. Seibert had a big, round, cheerful face and a high, bald forehead, a big voice, big, fleshy shoulders, and a grinning air of worldly success that was like a rebuke to unthrifty idlers. He was not popular at the Pulotu Club, where sometimes he would drop into a veranda chair with an air of slight weariness and talk in a way that disturbed the lotus-eaters dozing in their long cane chairs.

Talking with an aimless wave of his big hand, he would tell what he had been doing—of the cinnamon grove he had been experimenting with, of tobacco land he was clearing, of pepper vine holes he was digging and manuring—he seemed to be always talking about manures and fertiliser—of the new hillside that was going into cane; and of how he had ridden or walked or climbed somewhere.