Halcott once more lit his pipe.
The two others were silent, and Mr Tandy nodded when Halcott smiled and looked towards him.
“Yes,” he said, “there is a little more of my story yet untold; there is a portion of it still in the future, I trust. With this, however, destiny alone has to do. Suffice it to say, that as far as Doris and myself—my simple sailor-self—are concerned, we shall be married when I return from my next cruise, if all goes well, and, like two vessels leaving the harbour on just such a beautiful night as this, sail away to begin our voyage of life on just such a beautiful sea.
“You must both know Doris before I start. But where, think you, do I mean to sail to next? No, do not answer till I tell you one thing. Neither Doris nor her mother received, while in that little lake island, the slightest injury or insult.”
“Then there is some good in the breast of even the wildest savage,” put in Weathereye. “I always thought so; bother me if I didn’t. Ahem!”
“Ah, wait, Captain Weathereye, wait! I fear my experience is different from yours. Those fiendish savages on that Isle of Misfortune were reserving my dear Doris and her mother for a fate far more terrible than anything ever described in books of imagination.
“We rescued them, by God’s mercy, just in time. They were then under the protection of the awful priests, or medicine-men, and were being fed on fruits and on the petals of rare and beautiful flowers. Their hut itself was composed of flowers and foliage.
“The king, no, not even he, could come near them, until the medicine-men had propitiated the demons that live, according to their belief, in every wood and in every ravine and gully in the island.
“Then, at the full of the moon, on that tiny islet I have marked on the map, the king and his warriors would assemble at midnight, and the awful orgies would commence.
“I shudder even now when I think of it. I happily cannot describe to you the tortures these poor ladies would have been put to before the final, fearful act. But the king would drink ‘white blood.’ He would then be invulnerable. No foe could any more prevail against him.