"A dull yellow like a rainbow, only more pointed, and my skipper said to me, 'Sir Owen, that is one of them hurricanes; if I knew which way she was going I'd try to get out of the way as fast as I could, for we shall be torn to pieces in a very few minutes.' I assure you it was an anxious moment watching that red, yellow light in the sky; it grew fainter, and eventually disappeared, and the skipper said, 'We have just missed it.' A few days afterwards we came into the Mauritius, and the first thing we saw was a great vessel in the ports, her iron masts twisted and torn just like hairpins, Evelyn. She had been caught in the tornado, a great three-masted vessel…. We should have gone down like an open boat."
"And after you left the Mauritius your destination was—"
"Borneo, Sumatra, the Malay Archipelago."
"But what were you seeking in the Malay Archipelago?"
"What does one ever seek? One seeks, no matter what; and, not being able to see you, Evelyn, I thought I would try to see everything in the world."
"But there is nothing to see in Borneo?"
"Well, you will laugh when I tell you, but it seemed to me that I'd like to see the orang-outang in his native forests. I had been to Greece, and I knew the Italian Renaissance—"
"And after so much art to see an orang-outang in a tree would be a new experience, Owen."
"Soon there will be no more higher apes, if medical science continues to progress; no more gorillas or chimpanzees."
"In a world without gorillas life will not be worth living. I quite understand."