And, as Major Stanleigh and I were to discover, the fellow seemed to
have developed a genuine affection for Lakalatcha, as the smoking
cone was called by the natives of the adjoining islands. From long
association he had come to know its whims and moods as one comes to
know those of a petulant woman one lives with. It was a bizarre and
preposterous intimacy, in which Leavitt seemed to find a wholly
acceptable substitute for human society, and there was something
repellant about the man's eccentricity. He had various names for the
smoking cone that towered a mile or more above his head: "Old
Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and
irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or
"The Single-breasted Virgin"--these last, however, always in the
musical Malay equivalent. He had no end of names--romantic, splenetic,
of opprobrium, or outright endearment--to suit, I imagine,
Lakalatcha's varying moods. In one respect they puzzled me--they
were of conflicting genders, some feminine and some masculine, as if
in Leavitt's loose-frayed imagination the mountain that beguiled his
days and disturbed his nights were hermaphroditic.
Leavitt as a source of information regarding the missing Farquharson
seemed preposterous when one reflected how out of touch with the
world he had been, but, to my astonishment, Major Stanleigh's clue
was right, for he had at last stumbled upon a man who had known
Farquharson well and who was voluminous about him--quite willingly so.
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