“To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter,” he continued. “The study of nature makes a man at last as remorseless as nature. I have gone on, not heeding anything but the question I was pursuing; and the material has⁠—dripped into the huts yonder. It is nearly eleven years since we came here, I and Montgomery and six Kanakas. I remember the green stillness of the island and the empty ocean about us, as though it was yesterday. The place seemed waiting for me.