I took the stone out of its case and looked at it. All in the rough as it was, it had some splendid rays when you got it into the sun. Just now it shot out crimson, blue and green like a display of fireworks.
“Mark, it’s a beauty,” I said. “I don’t see myself giving it up to a man-eating savage to make spells with; not much. But I don’t see either——”
“The Aryan races,” began the Marquis.
“Oh, don’t get scientific,” I begged. “I don’t feel as if I could stand it this morning, somehow. Besides, I was discussing what we were going to do.”
“Also I, if you would permit. The Aryan races—or, if you will be impatient and make grimace at me, I will jump some thousand years. You say you can not think what we shall do; it is solely because you are of the Teutonic descent. It has courage, this branch, but nimbleness in the mind it has not. The Latin races of whom I am one——”
“Oh, cut it, Marky,” I begged. “I believe they’re coming back; we’ve got to be serious.”
“I am everything that there is of serious, man with a head of a cabbage! I myself will show you what it is to belong to the Latin. Do you leave the negotiation to me?”
“Oh, you can do the talking,” I said. “You can do no harm, if you can’t do good. I’ll pass on anything you say, and at the same time keep a lookout for an ambush, which is just as likely as not.”
The Koiroros, it appeared, had brought the sweet potatoes with them, and concealed them not far away, for there they were, back again with a good load before the Marquis and I had well finished our discussion.
“Now,” said my companion, drawing himself up to his full height, “it is for you to see what it shall mean to be of the Latin and not of the Teutonic race. Behold! Tell them they shall not have the diamond.