With the _Sylph_ at anchor, we lay off Muloa for three nights, and
Leavitt gave us our fill of Farquharson, along with innumerable
digressions about volcanoes, neoplatonism, the Single Tax, and what
not. There was no keeping Leavitt to a coherent narrative about the
missing Farquharson. He was incapable of it, and Major Stanleigh and
myself had simply to wait in patience while Leavitt, delighted to
have an audience, dumped out for us the fantastic contents of his
mind, odd vagaries, recondite trash, and all. He was always getting
away from Farquharson, but, then, he was unfailingly bound to come
back to him. We had only to wait and catch the solid grains that now
and then fell in the winnowing of that unending stream of chaff. It
was a tedious and exasperating process, but it had its compensations.
At times Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as he was dull and
boresome. The conviction grew upon me that he had become a little
demented, as if his brain had been tainted by the sulphurous fumes
exhaled by the smoking crater above his head. His mind smoked,
flickered, and flared like an unsteady lamp, blown upon by choking
gases, in which the oil had run low.
But of the wanderer Farquharson he spoke with precision and authority,
for he had shared with Farquharson his bungalow there in Muloa--a
period of about six months, it seemed--and there Farquharson had
contracted a tropic fever and died.
Pages:
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182