“Yes, innocent so far as the natives are concerned. The native servants at the club are treated well as a rule, well fed and well paid, and they get many presents. Some of the members have handled them roughly at times, through drink or anger, but that is uncommon, and Sir John does not like it. If any of them is sick then Pryce comes and makes him well again, just as he is making your niece well again, and never anything to pay. The native who has something good—fish or fruit or fresh milk, can sell it better to the white man than to another native. It is a few of the younger men at the club who have greatly wronged my people, but there are many of my people who would like to destroy them all.”
“I wish you could tell me more of this Dr Pryce. Apart from all he has done for us I like him. I can’t understand your ideas about him.”
“What ideas?”
“When Hilda was ill you said—truly, I think—that Dr Pryce could save her. But you said it would be necessary to frighten him. Did you frighten him? Why was it necessary?”
“I thought he might like to kill her—you too. But I did not frighten him, and I believe I was wrong.”
“And that story of yours about the Snowflake?”
“I do not know. He asked me to get him a passage on the Snowflake. I wondered—and then I warned you. I said the ship and all aboard her would be lost. I think I was right then, and that it would not be so now.”
“Well, sir, I think you were wrong. He knows that I would give him that passage, that I’d give him the boat, that I’d give him anything. He has asked for nothing.”
“That is because, when your niece was ill, I made a little mistake, and he saw that I suspected him. If he is suspected then his plan is no good. He would know that.”
“It’s not an easy thing to find a good man who’ll sacrifice his life for his friends. Why should Dr Pryce do it for the scum at the Exiles’ Club?”