"Yes, my lord. Certainly, my lord," said John, cocking an eye at Madame, in which she detected some light of derisive humour.
"You had better," said Willie ominously. "I am a great English Lord, and most particular. If you do not work properly, I shall throw you overboard. The sharks will get you."
"As your lordship pleases," responded John Clifford.
Madame, frowning deeply, watched the two figures—the lord marching ahead with the villein humbly following—embark in Willatopy's collapsible boat, and row out to the yawl, which lay at anchor at the head of the bay. Willatopy would sail her in or out over the bar when the tide was high, though even he dared not push her through the rollers which broke on the bar when the water was at its lowest. Madame realised instantly that Clifford, by cunning flattery, had turned her flank and captured the interest of Willatopy. It was a new experience for the brown youth to possess an obsequious white slave who sweated at his orders, and who addressed him as "lord" and "lordship" in every sentence. The Baron of Topsham was beginning to believe that he must be something out of the common way if a white stranger would come all the way from England to call him lord, to work in his garden, and to clean the brass of his yacht. He supposed that a Lord in England was a kind of headman in a village or the chief in a tribe. Only, as the English were very rich and very proud, a Lord in England must be much more exalted than any man in the Straits—except, of course, the Administrator in Thursday Island, or Grant, the banker. He marched with his head held high, ordered John to row the collapsible boat—which job from long practice on the Thames in summer he achieved tolerably—and, after the yawl had been boarded, directed John towards the objects of his labour, and surveyed his operations from a critical distance. Cleaning the yawl was the one job of work which the Rich and Idle Willatopy had hitherto undertaken with his own hands. He had cared for the yawl as a Sportsman cares for his gun or his horse, and as a golfer cares for his clubs. It was, however, much pleasanter to superintend the labours of John.
"You are clever," he said at last approvingly. "Not stupid like my brown boys. I shall not go to England. I will be a great Lord in my island, and you shall stay with me always as my slave. That white girl, Marie, who looks at me sideways—so—with eyes that bite, I will ask Madame to give her to me. Now that I am an English Lord, and no longer a brown Hula of Bulaa, the girl Marie shall kiss my feet."
"You will never be really a great Lord unless you go to England where all the men and women are white slaves of the Lords who rule them," said John mendaciously. Having decided to go the whole hog, he did not spare decoration upon the beast. "Here you will be always Willatopy, the brown boy. There beyond the wide sea you will be the Right Honourable William Toppys, Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham."
"My father, the Honourable William Toppys, was a great Chief here on his island. I cannot be greater than my father."
"You can be, and you are," said John Clifford earnestly. "Your father was a younger son, never a great Lord. You are the Head of the House, Head of the ancient Family of Toppys. Even Sir John Toppys, who owns the Humming Top yonder, will be your servant."
"Huh!" cried Willatopy. "Is the yacht also mine? I will throw the Skipper, he who called me 'nigger,' and scorns me, I will throw him into the sea, and sail the Humming Top myself. It will be better even than my yawl."
"No," explained John, who had started Willatopy's mind working, and was alarmed where it would fetch up. "No. The yacht is not yours. It belongs to Sir John Toppys, not to you."