Tom looked at him just once. Yes, he could trust him. There was something almost benevolent in the man’s face, wild though he was and had been. His eye was a dark and kindly one, and strangely enough Tom thought that he had seen someone like him somewhere. He was not old, this wild man—probably but little older than Tom; and he was remarkably handsome—every movement of his lithe body was as graceful and easy as those of the jaguar.
“What shall I call you?” said Tom.
“My name is Yanakova.”
He led Tom through the woods and wilds for many miles, then into a close dark bit of jungle near the top of a high hill. Here was a cave. It was lined with skins and carpeted with skins—skins everywhere, indeed.
From the doorway of this strange dwelling, where the bushes were tied back with a piece of thong, they could see the ocean spread blue and beautiful far beneath them, the sea-beach with the white line of breaking waters, and all the greenery of hills and dells, ending in the dark and burned border around the sea.
Here the two new-made friends rested for nearly an hour, hardly speaking, for the day was a drowsy one.
“My good Yanakova,” said Tom at last, “will you tell me your story? It must be a strange one.”
“I’ll tell you my story,” said Yanakova with all the simplicity of a little child. And he spoke as follows, though it would be impossible to give the exact words, or even to describe the wild man’s method of talking:—
“My story is a sad one. I will begin not at the beginning but the end of it, when I met you. I took you for Spanish. Most of the Spanish I hate. But I had one friend among them. He was governor of this island long, long ago. We were convicts all, in number ten. The others had died or been taken away. Then the government of Ecuador forgot us. Sometimes in long intervals a ship would come, but not often. So the governor told me. They came for tortoises, but the tortoises were nearly all killed; then they came no more. But the convicts were bad; they rose one day and killed my friend the governor and his children, I fought like a madman. I loved the governor. But they left me for dead, and went away in a raft from the island. I could not look at the settlement after that. I fled to the woods, and lived as best I could.”