He spoke fairly good English, as did the woman who had declined his assistance, but with a foreign accent. He was brown, and thin, and wrinkled, and Basil saw at once that he was not an Englishman.
"I presume you have not breakfasted yet," was Basil's apparently inconsequential answer to the question.
"Not yet," said the stranger impatiently, shaking himself free from Basil's grasp. "Why do you stop me? Is not the river free?"
"Quite free," said Basil; "but instead of eating you may be eaten."
He pointed downwards, and leaning forward the stranger beheld a huge alligator lurking beneath a thin thicket of reeds. The brute was perfectly motionless, but all its voracious senses were on the alert.
"Ugh!" cried the stranger, beginning to dress hurriedly. "That would be a bad commencement of my business."
He did not say "thank you," nor make the slightest acknowledgment of the service Basil had rendered him. This jarred upon the young man, who stood watching him get into his clothes. They were ragged and travel-stained, and the stranger's physical condition was evidently none of the best; but his eyes were keen, and all his intellectual forces were awake. In this respect Basil found an odd resemblance in him to the alligator waiting for prey in the waving reeds beneath, and also a less odd resemblance to the woman he had left lying in the shadow of the gum-trees.
"You have business here, then?" asked the young man.
"I have--important business. Understand that I answer simply to prove that I am not an intruder."
"I understand. Is the woman I met on my way a relative of yours?"