Victory | Page 7

case a magic circle. It just
touched Manila, and he had been seen there. It just touched Saigon, and

he was likewise seen there once. Perhaps these were his attempts to
break out. If so, they were failures. The enchantment must have been an
unbreakable one. The manager--the man who heard the
exclamation--had been so impressed by the tone, fervour, rapture, what
you will, or perhaps by the incongruity of it that he had related the
experience to more than one person.
"Queer chap, that Swede," was his only comment; but this is the origin
of the name "Enchanted Heyst" which some fellows fastened on our
man.
He also had other names. In his early years, long before he got so
becomingly bald on the top, he went to present a letter of introduction
to Mr. Tesman of Tesman Brothers, a Sourabaya firm-- tip-top house.
Well, Mr. Tesman was a kindly, benevolent old gentleman. He did not
know what to make of that caller. After telling him that they wished to
render his stay among the islands as pleasant as possible, and that they
were ready to assist him in his plans, and so on, and after receiving
Heyst's thanks--you know the usual kind of conversation--he proceeded
to query in a slow, paternal tone:
"And you are interested in--?"
"Facts," broke in Heyst in his courtly voice. "There's nothing worth
knowing but facts. Hard facts! Facts alone, Mr. Tesman."
I don't know if old Tesman agreed with him or not, but he must have
spoken about it, because, for a time, our man got the name of "Hard
Facts." He had the singular good fortune that his sayings stuck to him
and became part of his name. Thereafter he mooned about the Java Sea
in some of the Tesmans' trading schooners, and then vanished, on board
an Arab ship, in the direction of New Guinea. He remained so long in
that outlying part of his enchanted circle that he was nearly forgotten
before he swam into view again in a native proa full of Goram
vagabonds, burnt black by the sun, very lean, his hair much thinned,
and a portfolio of sketches under his arm. He showed these willingly,
but was very reserved as to anything else. He had had an "amusing
time," he said. A man who will go to New Guinea for fun--well!

Later, years afterwards, when the last vestiges of youth had gone off his
face and all the hair off the top of his head, and his red- gold pair of
horizontal moustaches had grown to really noble proportions, a certain
disreputable white man fastened upon him an epithet. Putting down
with a shaking hand a long glass emptied of its contents--paid for by
Heyst--he said, with that deliberate sagacity which no mere
water-drinker ever attained:
"Heyst's a puffect g'n'lman. Puffect! But he's a ut-uto-utopist."
Heyst had just gone out of the place of public refreshment where this
pronouncement was voiced. Utopist, eh? Upon my word, the only thing
I heard him say which might have had a bearing on the point was his
invitation to old McNab himself. Turning with that finished courtesy of
attitude, movement voice, which was his obvious characteristic, he had
said with delicate playfulness:
"Come along and quench your thirst with us, Mr. McNab!"
Perhaps that was it. A man who could propose, even playfully, to
quench old McNab's thirst must have been a utopist, a pursuer of
chimeras; for of downright irony Heyst was not prodigal. And, may be,
this was the reason why he was generally liked. At that epoch in his life,
in the fulness of his physical development, of a broad, martial presence,
with his bald head and long moustaches, he resembled the portraits of
Charles XII, of adventurous memory. However, there was no reason to
think that Heyst was in any way a fighting man.
CHAPTER TWO

It was about this time that Heyst became associated with Morrison on
terms about which people were in doubt. Some said he was a partner,
others said he was a sort of paying guest, but the real truth of the matter
was more complex. One day Heyst turned up in Timor. Why in Timor,
of all places in the world, no one knows. Well, he was mooning about
Delli, that highly pestilential place, possibly in search of some

undiscovered facts, when he came in the street upon Morrison, who, in
his way, was also an "enchanted" man. When you spoke to Morrison of
going home--he was from Dorsetshire--he shuddered. He said it was
dark and wet there; that it was like living with your head and shoulders
in a moist gunny-bag. That was only his exaggerated style of talking.
Morrison was "one of us." He was owner and master of the