Half a dozen persons in all that company comprised Landover's circle of desirables. Of the rest, most of them were impossible, three-fourths of them were “anarchists,” all of them were beneath notice,—except as listeners. As for Percival, if that young man was not literally and actually a bandit, at least he had all the instincts of one. In any case, he was a “bum.” Whenever Mr. Landover was at a loss for a word to express contumely for his fellow-man,—and he was seldom at a loss,—he called him a “bum.”
The women on board were divided into three classes in Landover's worldly opinion: the kind you would marry (rare), the kind you wouldn't marry (plentiful), and the kind you wouldn't have to marry (common). He put Olga Obosky and Careni-Amori in this rather extensive third class, and even went so far as to set what he considered a fair value upon them as human commodities!
He worked with the gang of “log-toters,” a term supplied by Percival. They were the men who carried or dragged the trimmed tree-trunks from the forest to the camp site, where they were subsequently hewn into shape for structural purposes by the more skilful handlers of ax and wedge and saw.
A certain man named Manuel Crust was the fore-man of this gang. He was a swarthy, powerful “Portugee” who was on his way to Rio to kill the pal who had run away with his wife. He was going up there to kill Sebastian Cabral and live happily for ever afterward. His idea of future happiness was to sit by the fireside in his declining years and pleasantly ruminate over the variety of deaths he had inflicted upon the loathsome Sebastian. In the first place, he was going to strangle him with his huge, gnarled hands; then he was going to cut off his ears and nose and stuff them into the vast slit he had made in his throat; then he would dig his heart out with a machete; then, one by one, he would expertly amputate his legs, arms and tongue; afterwards he would go through the grisly process of disemboweling him; and, then, in the end, he would build a nice, roaring fire and destroy what remained of Sebastian. Inasmuch as either of these sanguinary and successive measures might reasonably be expected to produce the desired result, it will be seen that Sebastian was doomed to experience at least six horrific deaths before the avenger got through with him. At any rate, if one could believe Manuel,—and there seemed to be no end of conviction in the way he expressed himself,—the luckless home-wrecker, if he lived long enough, was absolutely certain to die.
Landover took a strange fancy to Manuel Crust. He was drawn to him in the first place by the blasphemous things he said about Percival. In the second place, he enjoyed Manuel's vituperative remarks about cutting the liver out of the “boss.” Notwithstanding the fact that Manuel was more or less given to cutting the livers out of remote and invisible persons,—including King Alfonso, the Kaiser, Queen Victoria (he didn't know she was dead), King Manuel, the Czar of Russia, the Presidents of all the South American republics, the Sultan of Turkey, President Roosevelt, and Sebastian Cabral,—Mr. Landover positively loved to hear him talk. He made a point of getting him to talk about Percival a great deal of the time. He also liked the way in which the prodigious Manuel deferred to him. It inspired the philanthropic motives that led him to share his very excellent cigars with the doughty foreman. Moreover, he had something far back in his mind, had Mr. Abel Landover.
Percival was indefatigable. He set the example for every one else, and nothing daunted him. The sceptics,—and there were many of them at the start,—no longer shook their heads as they went about what once had loomed as a hopeless enterprise, for to their astonishment and gratification the “camp” was actually becoming a substantial reality.
The small group of men who, for obvious reasons, had courted the favour of Abel Landover at the outset, now went out of their way to “stand in” with the amazingly popular man of the hour.
He represented power, he stood for achievement, he rode on the crest of the wave,—and so they believed in him! Landover may have been a wizard in New York, but the wizard of Trigger Island was quite another person altogether,—hence the very sensible defection.
These gentlemen openly and ardently opposed him on one occasion, however. It was when he proposed that the island should be named for the beloved Captain. They insisted that it be called Percival Island. Failing in this, they advocated with great enthusiasm, but with no success, the application of Percival's name to almost every noticeable peculiarity that the island possessed. They objected fiercely to the adoption of such titles as these: Mott Haven (the basin); Split Mountain; Gray Ridge (after the lamented Chief Engineer); Penguin Rocks; The Gate of the Winds; Top o' the Morning Peak; Dismal Forest (west of the channel); Peter Pan Wood (east of the channel); Good Luck Channel; Cypress Point; Cape Sunrise (the extreme easterly end of the island); Leap-frog River; Little Sandy and Big Sandy (the beaches); Cracko-day Farm; New Gibraltar (the western end of the island); St. Anthony Falls. Michael O'Malley Malone christened the turbulent little waterfall up in the hills. He liked the sound of the name, he claimed, and besides it was about time the stigma of shame that had so long rested upon the poor old saint was rewarded by complete though belated vindication.
Strange to say, no name was ever proposed for the “camp.” Back in the mind of each and every member of the lost company lay the unvoiced belief,—amounting to superstition,—that it would be tempting fate to speak of this long row of cabins as anything more enduring than “the camp.”