They read as follows:

"THE STORY OF DJORAK

"This is what I, the Historian, have been able to discover about the life of Djorak, called The Prisoner, before he came to us. He told it to me himself before he was placed in his prison of sugar-canes.

"He is a sailor.

"He has been tattooed.

"Nearly everything that has been tattooed upon him is very terrible; for instance, one can read upon his shoulder-blade:

"'Eat meat raw if you can't get it cooked.'

"Indeed, he has himself avowed to me that he used to eat all sorts of animals, rabbits, sheep, and even birds.

"On his other shoulder was written:

"'Avoid water like poison.'

"He had also inscribed about his person:

"'Drink your gin and whisky neat.'

"'Always have a hot drink in the evening.'

"'Reverence the sun and each of the winds as it blows.'

"On his breast he bore a heart cruelly transfixed with arrows.

"I gathered that from his childhood he was rough and disobedient. That when as a little boy he used to go into the wood behind the house to smoke, his mother always followed him and carefully presented him with an ash-tray, yet he never made use of the tray; but kept it in his pocket and scattered the ash all over the wood.

"Instead of cutting his toe-nails as we do with the help of a long-handled pair of scissors and a telescope, he preferred to take each nail off separately, trim it, and put it back, although this invariably made his mother cry.

"He was so perverse that when any one asked him what the time was he would always insist on telling it by the barometer, although he knew perfectly well that the exact time is only to be found on the clock.

"He always marked out the tennis-court with green chalk, because he maintained that the white looked too loud and left marks upon the grass.

"Evidently from his earliest youth he was of the stuff of which criminals are made.

"When he grew up he married and became the father of three adorable little girls."

At the mention of the three little girls Redy and Smaly stopped and looked at each other.

"Those are the three little daughters of the Prisoner," whispered Redy.

Smaly went on reading:

"When his wife died," Smaly read, "he decided to give to his daughters a good, if rather original education.

"Every alternate week he dressed them as boys, and during that week they behaved as boys, and the next week they would become girls again. 'That will accustom them to anything,' he used to say. 'Nothing in life should be difficult to them after that.'

"Three young men fell in love with them, but unfortunately called on their father to demand them in marriage one Monday morning when the three girls were dressed as boys, and considered as such by their father.

"The three young men were thrown out of the house with great violence by the infuriated parent. One young man lost his hat, the second lost his arms and his walking-stick, and the third lost one of his legs.

"Certainly Djorak's love for his daughters was very intense.

"It was this love which was his ruin.

"One day in the presence of the King of his country he boasted of being the father of the three most beautiful young girls in his country.

"What an imprudence! The King himself possessed a daughter whose beauty, to say the least of it, was not remarkable, and the King, who was very intelligent, was perfectly well aware of the fact. He was furious when he heard Djorak's boast. He had him arrested and tried before the high court, who decided that the punishment of death was barely sufficient for such an audacious criminal.

"The punishment of death in Djorak's country is by beheading with the sword; a criminal's head is only cut off once—but it is once and for all."