About this story
At Schomberg's hotel a touring orchestra plays for drunken merchants, and one violinist, Lena, flinches when the older pianist pinches her arm between pieces. You offer her the only thing you have, an empty island, and by midnight you are helping her aboard a launch while the hotelkeeper shouts for the harbor police behind you.
How it opens
The Tropical Belt Coal Company had evaporated, then entered official liquidation.
WangCompany gone, Number One station still here, and Mr Heyst still here too.
You remained on Samburan among rusting rails, empty sheds, and your father's books.
Captain DavidsonAxel, solitude is admirable until it becomes an unpaid appointment.
Choose
Someone must close what other men opened.
The island asks less of me than civilization does.
I have nowhere urgent to go.