Had Madame realised at the beginning how rapidly the atmosphere would change, how quickly the wild ingenuous boy Willatopy would become interested in the adroit cunning man, John Clifford, she might have acted with her customary and ruthless illegality. On that first morning she could easily have persuaded Willatopy to convey the intruder out to the Humming Top, and could have held him there inactive until a convenient moment arrived for carrying him back to Thursday Island. Adequately frightened, Clifford might have been prevailed upon to set sail for home, alone, but I doubt whether this temporarily drastic course would have availed for long. The firm of poachers in St. Mary Axe could not indefinitely have been denied access to their prey on Tops Island. After Madame and her yacht had gone, John Clifford, or another, would have returned. Willatopy, as the half-caste Heir of Topsham, was too attractive a bait for lawyers to have been left for many months in the security of his island solitude. Roger Gatepath, who understood his own profession, was convinced that the legal vultures of London would speedily discover and fasten upon the profitable pigeon of the Torres Straits.
Clifford found his suit case within the fringe of woodland where first he had encountered Willatopy. And as he stooped to pick it up, a heavy hand smote him upon the back. It was Willatopy again. The boy had been watching the breakfast party of two, and now that Clifford was alone interposed his dark powerful figure between the lawyer and the beach.
"This time," said he, smacking his lips, "there will be no Madame Gilbert."
"Why should you chase me again?" asked Clifford, who feared the boy less now that he had breakfasted. Besides, Willatopy no longer carried the fish spear. "Why should you chase me, my lord? I am your friend, and have come to make you a very rich and great lord in England."
Willie frowned. "I am very rich now. You English are cannibals. You want to get me away that you may kill and eat me. My father said that the English devoured one another."
"That meant, my lord," said Clifford, "that the English try to take money from one another."
"As they try to do in Thursday Island," assented Willatopy. "The English try to make me drink so that they may steal my money. I keep it in a bag tied round my waist. Miles and miles of shore and forest are mine, my banker has piles and piles of my silver, all in bags. It comes from England. The brown girls love my bright blue eyes and the brown boys are my servants. I am already rich, and the lord of Tops Island. You are a liar."
"It is a small thing," said Clifford, "to be the lord of a little island in the Straits, and to be master of brown girls and boys. In England you would be a real Lord, the Lord of Topsham; you would have houses, big houses, and your servants would be white, not brown. White women, beautiful white women, would be at your pleasure, and white men would obey your commands."
"White women!" asked Willatopy, who began to be interested. "Would white women love my blue eyes which are like the sky at dawn?"
"They would, my lord. And if you wish to marry one of them she would feel honoured by your choice."