“There you go again, sir!” cried Uncle Paul, irascibly now. “You know perfectly well, Rodney, how this sort of thing annoys me. I suppose the next thing you will be telling me is that one of them came with his spear and behaved as one of Captain Cook’s friends says the Australian blacks behaved to the girls they wanted to steal for their wives.”
“No, I don’t, uncle,” cried the boy ill-humouredly. “I don’t know what Captain Cook’s friends say. I hardly know who Captain Cook is— Yes, I do: he’s the man who sailed round the world.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you, sir. He said the blacks come in the dark, twist their spears in the girls’ hair, and carry them away. And I suppose you mean to infer that that’s what has become of the Spanish captain?”
“I don’t, uncle,” cried Rodd.
“But if you do, sir, you are wrong; for the Don, as you two lads nicknamed him, had hardly a bit of hair on his head. There, there, there; being cross won’t make any better of it. Hope to goodness that nothing has happened to the poor fellow. Can’t have got up in the night and walked away in his sleep, can he?”
“Well, but if he had, uncle, he must have woke up by this time, and then he’d walk back again.”
“Well, we can’t go without him, my dear lads. He has been a very faithful servant to us, and it would be a mean, cowardly, despicable act for us to leave him in the lurch. Oh, it’s impossible. It would be little better than murder to leave a man here without a boat.”
Rodd looked hard at Morny, as if questioning him with his eyes; and so the French lad took it to be, for he made a deprecating gesture with his hands.
The doctor was watching his nephew keenly, and now clapped him sharply on the shoulder.
“What are you thinking about, sir?” he cried.