He was always trying to roll cigarettes on his knee with his stumps, telling endless yarns of Polynesia and whining and cursing in turn about '_mon malheur_.' His hands had been blown away by a dynamite cartridge while fishing in some lagoon.

This accident, I believe, had made him more wicked than before, which is saying a good deal.
"He was always talking about 'resuming his activities' some day, whatever they were, if he could only get an intelligent companion.

It was evident that the little shop was no field for his activities, and the sickly woman with her face tied up, who used to look in sometimes through the back door, was no companion for him.
"And, true enough, he vanished from Sydney before long, after some trouble with the Excise fellows about his stock.

Goods stolen out of a warehouse or something similar.

He left the woman behind, but he must have secured some sort of companion--he could not have shifted for himself; but whom he went away with, and where, and what other companions he might have picked up afterwards, it is impossible to make the remotest guess about.
"Why exactly he came this way I can't tell.