back to the plantation and work out the terms of their contracts. This
judgment would soon be rendered. Proceedings were drawing to a close. He
could see that. There was no more testifying, no more gabble of tongues.
The French devils were tired, too, and evidently waiting for the judgment.
And as he waited he remembered back in his life to the time when he had
signed the contract and set sail in the ship for Tahiti. Times had been
hard in his sea-coast village, and when he indentured himself to labour for
five years in the South Seas at fifty cents Mexican a day, he had thought
himself fortunate. There were men in his village who toiled a whole year
for ten dollars Mexican, and there were women who made nets all the year
round for five dollars, while in the houses of shopkeepers there were
maidservants who received four dollars for a year of service. And here he
was to receive fifty cents a day; for one day, only one day, he was to
receive that princely sum! What if the work were hard? At the end of the
five years he would return home--that was in the contract--and he would
never have to work again. He would be a rich man for life, with a house of
his own, a wife, and children growing up to venerate him. Yes, and back of
the house he would have a small garden, a place of meditation and repose,
with goldfish in a tiny lakelet, and wind bells tinkling in the several
trees, and there would be a high wall all around so that his meditation and
repose should be undisturbed.

Well, he had worked out three of those five years. He was already a
wealthy man (in his own country) through his earnings, and only two years
more intervened between the cotton plantation on Tahiti and the meditation
and repose that awaited him. But just now he was losing money because of
the unfortunate accident of being present at the killing of Chung Ga. He
had lain three weeks in prison, and for each day of those three weeks he
had lost fifty cents. But now judgment would soon be given, and he would
go back to work.