“Precisely. Before long, Matava will be back from the coast, and will hear of them, and will come out on to the savanna at night to see them for himself. And he would watch night after night with an Indian’s patience till he saw them.”
“Yes; I suppose Monella won’t object? We ought not to do it without his consent. But for that awful forest, we might even go farther; we might make an expedition for a week or two, and get to ‘Monella Lodge’ and leave a letter there; or even to Daranato, and leave letters to be taken to the coast by the first Indians going that way.”
“No, we can’t manage that, nor would Monella like us to be away so long. You never know what trouble might turn up here with these priests and their vile crew. And that reminds me of that letter Monella read to-day. What did you think of it?”
“An extraordinary letter! Really, I feel almost inclined to go back to my former idea that Monella and his friends were all mad together!”
Leonard stared aghast.
“What! You speak of that again?” he exclaimed, real indignation in his tones. “After the way everything has come out—after all Monella’s kindness——”
Jack stopped him with a smile and a touch of his hand on the other’s arm.
“Put the brake on, old man,” he said. “I don’t mean anything disrespectful. But if Monella, who already seems to have been about the world and to have seen as much as three ordinary men of three score years and ten—if the point to which his memory reaches is only a portion of his life—why, you see, he must be Methuselah, or the Wandering Jew himself, or some other mythical being. Already, he has puzzled me, times enough, with his extraordinary tales; at the same time you cannot doubt his absolute sincerity. So that if his ‘complete’ memory is to go back farther still, why—Heaven help us!—we sha’n’t know whether we are on our heads or our heels.”
After a short silence Leonard spoke.
“But, if they had this ‘Plant of Life’ with them—those he was with—would that not in part account for it?”