“Silence! It is a falsehood—a calumny—a damned lie! How dare you say that?”
“Oh, easy enough!” said Chumbley, without moving a muscle. “It’s just waggling one’s tongue a bit. Bully away, old man, I don’t mind; and you’ll feel better when you’ve rid yourself of all that spleen.”
“As to Miss Perowne knowing of this—”
“Oh, that’s absurd, of course!” cried Chumbley; “but she has pitched you over, old man, and you now belong to the ranks of the unblessed.”
“I cannot quarrel with you, Chumbley,” said Hilton, cooling down, “because I know you to be too good a fellow to slight; but will you talk sense?”
“Yes, dear boy, of course I will; but I wish you’d try this tobacco. This is sense that I am going to say now. I feel sure that we have been kidnapped so that our new friends may get a nice little sum for us out of the British Government.”
“Well, it is likely,” said Hilton, whose anger had been of a fleeting nature. “But if they do not get the ransom—what then?”
“That’s an unpleasant emergency that it is not worth while to consider until we know that negotiations have failed. It is unpleasant, dear boy, because I suppose we should then get a taste of kris, applied in a dexterous manner peculiar to the Malays, through the hollow of the left shoulder. But that would only be a dernier ressort, and a thousand things might happen in the meantime. It will all come right in the end.”
Seeing that Chumbley was determined to make the best of their position, Hilton gradually began to take somewhat of the same tone; and agreeing with his friend that at present any attempt at escape would be folly, he partook heartily of the excellent second meal provided for them, questioned their guard, but obtained no information whatever as to where they were and why they had been brought, and ended by seating himself by the open window and listening to the weird noises of the jungle as darkness fell.
Feeling weary at last, Hilton sought his couch, and lay thinking once more of Helen, wondering where she was, but with less excitement than of old; and somehow the sweet, earnest face of Grey Stuart rose like a pleasant picture before him, as he fell asleep, thinking that if Helen, with her beauteous face, had only had the sweet disposition of her schoolfellow and companion, what a lovable woman she would have been.