"Stop," she cried. "Who is this man, Willatopy, that you should frighten him so?"
"He wants to eat me," roared Willatopy. "Stand aside, Madame, that I may cut off his ugly white head and smoke it in the fire of my cook-house."
The stranger howled, and wriggled between Madame's feet, as if, like an armadillo, he would burrow his way to safety through the fine sharp sand. It was not the flaked oatmeal of a coral beach, for the water of the bay, flushed by island streams, did not carry the madrepores' living ration of salt.
"Stand back, Willatopy," commanded Madame Gilbert sternly. She pushed the stranger contemptuously with her bare white foot. "Get up, you crawling thing there, and tell me who you are. This island is private property, and you have no business here."
The man cautiously got upon his feet, and stood so that Madame's strong body interposed between his terrified person and the savage spear of Willatopy. His absurd clothes were plastered thickly with damp, clinging sand—his thin rat face was pinched and white, and his lank, mud-coloured hair and moustache drooped forlornly. He was not a proud specimen of the dominant white race. He gasped and stuttered behind the protective back of Madame, who still faced towards Willatopy, and held the savage half of him in subjection. Willatopy threw down his spear.
"As my lady pleases," said he sourly.
The trespasser upon the fair strand of Tops Island regained some little of the thin courage which had poured out of his black boots. He was no longer menaced with immediate death at the point of the barbarous fish spear; a beautiful white woman was present; had he not been an officer—God forgive our blear-eyed War Office—and was he not a gentleman? He perked up a little, tried to brush the sand from his sleeves and spoke.
"I am John Clifford, managing clerk to Chudleigh, Caves, Caves, and Chudleigh, solicitors, of St. Mary Axe."
"Another lawyer!" cried Madame, and broke into peal after peal of rippling laughter. "Another lawyer! And once again that wonderful perspicuous Willatopy has chased a lawyer to the sea with a fish spear. Willatopy, I forgive you. What a happy world it would be if all men had your instinct for vermin and had from the first adopted your methods of extermination."
"So that's all right," quoth Willatopy, possessing himself of the fallen fish spear.