“Who?”
“Tumongong, and brought me up here, and now I’m as strong as you are.”
“Yes, you look wonderfully brown and well.”
“And you took me for a nigger! What a game!”
“Of course it was very stupid of me.”
“Oh, I don’t know. But, I say, I am glad you’ve come. You won’t be able to go away again, but that don’t matter. It’s a jolly place, and you and I and old Tim will go shooting and fishing, and—I say—I shall come with you and your uncle collecting specimens.”
“I hope so,” said Ned, who began to like his new acquaintance. “But don’t you feel as if you are a prisoner here?”
“No; not a bit. I go where I like. Old Jamjah knows I shan’t run away from my people.”
“Jamjar?”
“That’s only my fun. I call him the Rajah of Jamjah sometimes, because he’s such a beggar to eat sweets. He asks me sometimes to go and see him, and then we have a jam feed. I’m pretty tidy that way, but he beats me hollow. Perhaps he’ll ask you some day, and if he takes to you and likes you, he gives you all sorts of things, for he’s tremendously rich, and always getting more. He wants to find gold and emeralds and rubies if he can, to make him richer, but none of his people have the gumption to look in the right place.”