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It was incredible. Combe simply could not believe it.

Most of his time he loitered in colourless misery at the Pulotu Club and complained of Seibert, the big, hearty man, his son-in-law. It had become so that the languid idlers would stir and vanish at the sound of his melancholy voice. Combe drank little or nothing himself, and seldom stood drinks, which made the idlers feel they had been cheated after an hour of listening to his unending lamentation.

The club loungers would, in pretended sympathy for the son-in-law, often repeat all that Combe had said, and more, in the hope that it would annoy Seibert; but the old fellow's mumbling and grumbling might have been a fly buzzing for all that he seemed to care.

"His place it is going all to weeds and rot," Seibert would say, grinning with mask-like cheerfulness.

Which was largely true. Combe, shuffling, vague-eyed, made out as best he could in the gathering and splitting of cocoanuts with whatever superintendent it pleased the Lord to send him; though the one he now had was sent by Brundage a year or two before. This was Mr. Grinnell, one of England's younger sons—very young—who knew but little of his work, yet remained honest and sober.