“I thought it was preserving things, uncle,” I said.
“So it is, my boy, full of preserving things, one of which you shall soon have for a dose. I hope you like bitters, Nat?”
He laughed so pleasantly that he seemed to give me courage, but I glanced in a frightened way at the opening as I said that I did not much mind.
He saw my glance, and went outside with a cup in his hand, to come back in a few minutes with it full of water from a pool close by.
“No wild beasts about, Nat, my boy,” he said merrily. “They were only fever phantoms.”
“But I have not been to sleep, uncle,” I protested.
“Sign that you are ill, Nat, because generally you drop off in an instant and sleep soundly for hours. There are no wild beasts, my boy, in these islands.”
“But I’m sure I heard a great ape breathing hard, and it broke off a great branch in the forest.”
“And I’m sure, Nat, that you heard Ebo snoring; and as to the branch breaking, you heard, I dare say, a dead one fall. They are always falling in these old forests. We don’t notice the noise in the day, when the birds are singing, but in the night everything sounds wonderfully clear.”
“But I’m certain I heard a crocodile crawling up out of the sea, and creeping towards the hut.”