'There,' said he finally, indicating the little creek to which the footpath led, 'that is where the boat lands that once a year brings me my provisions. It puts off from my Aunt Amelia's yacht—The Tattooed Quaker. My Aunt Amelia is the only relative that remains to me. It is she who supplies the tinned meats and the pears. She really has admirable taste, although her choice in names may be a little fantastic. In addition to the provisions, it is my aunt's custom to send a letter beseeching me to return in the yacht to England, and declaring that if I do not, that particular supply of food will be the last. For forty years she has done this. She is a noble woman, my Aunt Amelia.'
'When is the boat due?' Chimp asked, thinking more of its possible effect upon himself than upon the Hermit.
'Soon, soon,' the old man replied, with something very like a sigh. 'In a fortnight's time, in fact.'
'What a pity!' said Chimp. 'And I say, sir,' he added, 'how decent to be you. Only there ought to be some niggers.'
The Hermit sighed. They walked back without speaking, and not ten minutes had passed before Chimp was sound asleep in a corner of the cave, while the Hermit lay gazing at the stars.
On awaking, Chimp found that the cave was empty. For a moment he thought himself still dreaming, but the table laid for breakfast recalled him to facts, and he fell to thinking of the Hermit. 'Rum old beggar!' he mused. 'A screw loose somewhere, I guess.' When the Hermit returned, it was plain that the old man had something on his mind, as the saying is. He spoke not at all at breakfast, except, when laying the table, to remark that potted ham and chicken make a pleasing variety upon bloater paste. But after breakfast, placing one seat in the shade for Chimp and one for himself, he talked.
'I have been thinking deeply, Alexander Joseph Chemmle,' he began. 'During the night I have reviewed my life, and now more than ever I am conscious of the limiting influence exerted upon a philosopher by the loss of boyhood. The suspicion has been with me for years: it is now a certainty. You are not likely, my young friend, to be with me long, for The Tattooed Quaker will, of course, carry you back to England next week. But in the intervening time I want you, so far as is within your power, to make a boy of me. I put myself unreservedly in your hands. Consider me your apprentice. Will you do this?' The Hermit watched Chimp's face anxiously.
Chimp was staggered completely. A screw loose, he had thought; but surely it was the height of madness for a man to wish to be a boy again. Chimp and his companions spent a large part of their time in wishing to be men: the other side was not to be believed. But he pulled himself together with the thought that to humour this old lunatic might be funny, and would last only a week. After all, to find a cracked man on the island was better than to find no man at all, now that Ballantyne had been proved to be so wrong. And just then the boy caught a glimpse of the Hermit's anxious eager eyes. 'All right,' he said quickly, 'I'm game. But it'll be rather difficult, you know.'
'Difficult!' exclaimed the Hermit, with an expression of mingled pain and alarm. 'How? Not seriously, I trust?'
'Oh no!' said Chimp; 'but you're rather old, you see, and boys are not in the habit of wearing beards three feet long; although,' he added encouragingly, noting the look of disappointment on the Hermit's face, 'I don't see why they shouldn't. Why, there was a fellow at our school who had whiskers before he was fourteen, and we shaved them too. Tied him down and cut off one side one day and the other the next. After that he bought a razor.'