night--which were often too thick, one would think, to let a breath of
air through. There was seldom enough wind to blow a feather along. On
most evenings of the year Heyst could have sat outside with a naked
candle to read one of the books left him by his late father. It was not
a mean store. But he never did that. Afraid of mosquitoes, very likely.
Neither was he ever tempted by the silence to address any casual remarks
to the companion glow of the volcano. He was not mad. Queer chap--yes,
that may have been said, and in fact was said; but there is a tremendous
difference between the two, you will allow.

On the nights of full moon the silence around Samburan--the "Round
Island" of the charts--was dazzling; and in the flood of cold light
Heyst could see his immediate surroundings, which had the aspect of
an abandoned settlement invaded by the jungle: vague roofs above low
vegetation, broken shadows of bamboo fences in the sheen of long grass,
something like an overgrown bit of road slanting among ragged thickets
towards the shore only a couple of hundred yards away, with a black
jetty and a mound of some sort, quite inky on its unlighted side. But
the most conspicuous object was a gigantic blackboard raised on two
posts and presenting to Heyst, when the moon got over that side, the
white letters "T. B. C. Co." in a row at least two feet high. These were
the initials of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, his employers--his late
employers, to be precise.

According to the unnatural mysteries of the financial world, the T. B.
C. Company's capital having evaporated in the course of two years, the
company went into liquidation--forced, I believe, not voluntary. There
was nothing forcible in the process, however. It was slow; and while the
liquidation--in London and Amsterdam--pursued its languid course, Axel
Heyst, styled in the prospectus "manager in the tropics," remained at