He had been long enough in my company by this time to know that I had generally very good reasons for anything I might say or do.
He stopped—not without a turn or two to finish it off nicely—and, responding to a pinch on the arm, moved away with me quite amicably. When we got back to the marea—the girl had vanished, somehow, as these natives can, without one’s even seeing how—he asked me what the matter was.
I did not answer him at first, for I was annoyed at the whole proceeding. Of course, I knew that he was only bent on a little trifling amusement—the Marquis let off most of his feelings in talk, and never took anything what you might call seriously—but all the same, he ought to have remembered, I thought, that we were in a strange, possibly a hostile country, and not have started flirting with any “little beautiful” before we had been an hour in the town.
So I sat down on the floor of the marea again, and lit my pipe before I would answer.
“Flint, my very good friend, I fear that you are in a blooming wax,” said the Marquis. “Why should you wax with me? What have I done?”
I took out my pipe. “You don’t seem to remember,” I said, “that we’re in a hostile country. I’d be obliged if you would.” I put back my pipe.
“What did you see?” asked the Marquis, quite grave and sensible now.
“I saw nothing,” I said. “I don’t know that there was anything. But I think I heard—the little creak that some of these big blackwood bows make.”
“When you take them to your bosom and pull hard?” asked the Marquis, who had been trying his strength on some of these weapons, and had been a good deal impressed by their power.
“Just that,” I said. “I wouldn’t dance the Love Dance of the Red Men of Roraima any more, if I were you. Or I wouldn’t dance it at that particular girl. Or at any girl.”