"Thank you, I should like it very much indeed, if it is safe—I mean, if the people are safe," she replied rather anxiously.
"Oh! you will see very little of the natives. They are a curious set; it is almost impossible to get at them, or to tame them."
"Have you ever tried?"
"Yes; we once had a young fellow from Havelock, as it happened; we showed him every kindness, gave him the best of food, loaded him with beads and every old tall hat on the island, but it was all of no use; he just fretted like a bird in a cage, and regularly pined away of home sickness.—He used to sit all day long, gazing, gazing over the sea in the direction of his home, and one morning when they went to see him, they found him sitting in his usual attitude, his face turned towards Havelock—quite dead!"
"Poor, poor fellow!" said Helen, with tears in her eyes; "how could you be so cruel, how could you have had the heart to keep him?"
"My dear young lady, it was not a matter of heart, but of duty."
Mr. Quentin's quick ear caught the significant word heart. Surely the General was never going to enter the lists against him, although he was unmarried and eligible beyond dispute? Leaning his elbows on the rail at the other side of Miss Denis, he resolved to make a third—welcome or otherwise—and said,—
"You are talking of the natives, sir? They are certainly most mysterious aborigines, for they do not resemble the Hindoos on one side, nor the Malays on the other. They are more like stunted niggers—you never see a man above five feet, some not more than four."
"Niggers, yes," replied the General; "there is some idea that they are descendants of the cargo of a slaver that was wrecked among these islands; other people think that they hail from New Guinea."
"They have very odd customs, have they not?" asked Helen.