Naturally, it was Davidson who had given him a lift out of his forsaken island. There were no other opportunities, unless some native craft were passing by a very remote and unsatisfactory chance to wait for. Yes, he came out with Davidson, to whom he volunteered the statement that it was only for a short time a few days, no more. He meant to go back to Samburan.

Davidson expressing his horror and incredulity of such foolishness, Heyst explained that when the company came into being he had his few belongings sent out from Europe.

To Davidson as to any of us, the idea of Heyst, the wandering, drifting, unattached Heyst, having any belongings of the sort that can furnish a house was startlingly novel. It was grotesquely fantastic. It was like a bird owning real property.

"Belongings? Do you mean chairs and tables?" Davidson asked with unconcealed astonishment.

Victory

IV

13

Heyst did mean that. "My poor father died in London. It has been stored there ever since," he explained.

"For all these years?" exclaimed Davidson, thinking how long we all had known Heyst flitting from tree to tree in a wilderness.

"Even longer," said Heyst, who had understood very well.

This seemed to imply that he had been wandering before he came under our observation. In what regions? At what early age? Mystery. Perhaps he was a bird that had never had a nest.

"I left school early," he remarked once to Davidson on the passage. "It was in England. A very good school. I

was not a shining success there."

The confessions of Heyst. Not one of us with the probable exception of Morrison, who was dead had ever heard so much of his history. It looks as if the experience of hermit life had the Page 16

power to loosen one's tongue, doesn't it?

During that memorable passage, in the Sissie, which took about two days, he volunteered other hints for you could not call it information about his history. And Davidson was interested. He was interested not because the hints were exciting but because of that innate curiosity about our fellows which is a trait of human nature. Davidson's existence too, running the Sissie along the Java Sea and back again, was distinctly monotonous and, in a sense, lonely. He never had any sort of company on board. Native deck passengers in plenty, of course, but never a white man, so the presence of Heyst for two days must have been a godsend.

Davidson was telling us all about it afterward. Heyst said that his father had written a lot of books.