“Come and lie down somewhere,” I said. “We’ve got to make a start today and you won’t be fit. Come on.” I led him off, reeling and staggering realistically and falling on my neck in a mimic drunken frenzy of affection. He kept it up till we reached the sleeping shed—empty now—and then drew himself erect and became more dignified and Marquisatorial than I should have thought any man could be in bare feet and pink pajamas, with his hair all over his face.
“I have sacrificed myself,” he said. “My character, she is gone. But procrastination is the steed that is stolen; I have act at once and we are saved.”
“You stop there and don’t get well too quick, in case any one comes back,” I said. “I’m off to get our packs ready and the carriers under way. The sooner we get out of this the better, Marky. I want the society of a few nice restful cannibals to quiet down my nerves.”
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VII
CONCERNING A CASSOWARY AND A HYMN BOOK
CHAPTER VII
CONCERNING A CASSOWARY AND A HYMN BOOK
“ I t’s a wise child that knows ’tis folly to be wise,” said the Marquis.
He was sitting in the supper-room, enjoying trifle, floating-island, tipsy-cake and the other items of a somewhat sticky and gassy supper. His partner, Mrs. Vandaleur, a very fascinating little widow in a demure black dress and the most scarlet of scarlet silk stockings, had just been carried off by the fluffy and indignant young Government officer to whom she rightly owed the supper-dances. The Marquis, who had danced without intermission from the first striking-up of the band (one piano, out of tune; one violin, much affected by the climate and given to emitting rat-like squeaks) until the eighteenth item in the programme, was now resting and refreshing; I, who had given up dancing many years ago and who wasn’t likely to begin again at a Port Moresby “shivoo,” was watching—if the truth must be told—watching the Marquis.
I was already getting uneasy about him, though we had only returned to the comparative civilization of Port Moresby the week before. We had a good ten days to wait for the next steamer to Sydney, and Port Moresby has nearly three hundred inhabitants, being a good deal the largest settlement in Papua. What were the chances of some one of the three hundred finding out in the course of those ten days that we possessed the second biggest diamond in the world, if the Marquis went on as he was doing now? It was his turn to wear the stone, and nothing would induce him to give it up to me for the night, even though it was much harder for him—being fat—to hide it about his person than for me. There it was, perfectly visible to me at all events, sticking out like a small tumor under the front of his shirt; and unless I was much more stupid than I supposed myself to be, it had already attracted some attention from little Mrs. Vandaleur.