One beautiful morning as we sat in the shed eating a late breakfast and engaged in a lively conversation concerning the successful manner in which we had evaded the notice of our neighbors at Farm Cove, wondering if they were still there, and if so how long they would remain, we were all surprised to see Duke come running into the shed as fast as he could go, and plunge under the table with his tail between his legs and a cowed air about him that was quite strange to the dog. The action was remarkable, for Duke was a well-bred dog, and this conduct was not only peculiar but also in very bad form. I got up immediately and looked up and down the beach. There, not ten rods away and coming straight toward the shed, was the chief of the pearl-fishing gang. Positively for a second or two I felt paralyzed. Mr. Millward and Alice were almost immediately beside me; and as soon as I could control myself I said to them in a low tone, “It is the leader.”
The man advanced with a perfectly assured self-possession, and when near took off his broad panama hat, bowed with great dignity and no lack of courtly grace, saying in Spanish, “The day is better for beholding you.”
“Good morning, sir,” said Mr. Millward.
“Ah, very good; you speak English,” said the stranger in our own tongue and with no trace of foreign pronunciation or accent. “I am glad. It is my own language. You will pardon me for intruding upon you. But I only followed my dog which has been lost for some time, and which I have just found. He ran into your premises, as you noticed just now.”
“Then your name must be H. Senlis,” said I to him with as much politeness of demeanor as I could command.
“True, my friend,” replied he, suavely; “no doubt you may read it on the dog’s collar. H. Senlis is my name, and Duke is my dog. The rascal mutinied and ran away from me, but that makes him no less my property.”
His property was at that moment cowering under the table, looking very much as an escaped convict might at the appearance of his keeper.
“Of course, Mr. Senlis,” said I, “if the dog is yours, as it seems he is, we lay no claim to him. He came to us as a stray animal. You have a right to your property, though we should be sorry to lose him. If you had not claimed him it was our intention to carry him away from the island soon at our departure.”
“Poor Duke!” said Alice; “we shall not like to part with him.”
Off came the panama again with a most profound bow, and he said, “Do not distress yourself, lady. It is not my intention or desire to take the dog from you. It became necessary for me to punish him for insubordination. He ran away. He is still in a mutinous mind, and I have no use for him unless it be to punish him again, and that is hardly worth the while, as I fear he is incorrigible. Permit me then to surrender to you”—another profound bow—“all my right and remaining title in the animal.”