In the course of the next half-hour, several other topics in addition to the matrimonial prospects of Major Minton and the constitutional shortcomings of Miss Hope were discussed on the verandah, until, at length, the sound of the steam-whistle of the Penguin was borne shore-wards by the breeze.
“That’s a message to me,” said Ross, starting up. “Come down to the shore and see the last of me for three months at any rate.”
Dr Koomadhi put on his helmet, and saw his friend safely through the surf on his way to where the steamer was swinging at her anchor. The sun had set before he returned to his house to dinner; and before he had risen from the table a message came to him that one of the officers of the Houssas was anxious to see him, being threatened with an attack of fever. The great stars were burning overhead before he returned from the barrack of the Houssas, and was able to throw off his coat and lie back in his chair in his own sitting-room.
He had a good deal to think about before going to his bedroom, and he seemed to find the darkness congenial with his thoughts. In fact, the negro acknowledged a sort of brotherhood in the night, and he remained for some hours in that fraternal darkness. It was just midnight when he went, with only a small amount of groping, to his desk, and took out of its drawer the ivory box containing the earshaped stone, into whose orifice he had spoken some words before leaving for the Commissioner’s house in the afternoon. He unlocked the box and removed the stone. He left his villa, taking the stone with him, and strolled once more to the house which he had visited a few hours before.
Lights were in the windows of the Residency, and certain musical sounds were coming from the room where he had been. With the twanging of the banjo there came the sound of a light bass voice of no particular timbre, chanting the words of the latest plantation melody—
“Don’t you belieb un, Massa John,
Jes’ winkie mid yo’ eye,
Kick up yo’ heels to de gasalier—
Say, how am dat for high?”
Dr Koomadhi listened while three stanzas of the doggerel were being sung by Major Minton; then he raised the ear-shaped stone that was in the hollow of his hand, and whispered some words into it as he had done in the afternoon. In a second the song stopped, although the singer was in the middle of a stanza.