When he saw that I was awake, he scrambled down from his perch and approached me, saying in a curiously high-pitched voice—
"Ho! ho! my friend, so you are awake again! Well, you've had a wonderful nap, twelve hours on end, or I'm a Dutchman."
I answered that I was surprised to hear it, and went on to ask where I was, and how I came there.
"Well, that's a long story," he said, still cracking his fingers, "but if you want to hear it, I'll tell you. I found you on the bend of the hill early this morning, lying like a dead man, with pints of good blood run to waste round about you. From the look of the ground I fixed it, young man, that you'd been fighting. But as that was no business of mine, I didn't take any heed of it, but just picked you up, and brought you in here, where you've been ever since."
He did not tell me that had I been any other than John Ramsay he would have let me lie there. But the reason for that, and how I came to hear of it, you shall know later on.
Of course I thanked him for his charity, but again, like John Treslar, he would not hear of it. Among his many extraordinary talents, he numbered a knowledge of surgery, and under his care I made rapid progress towards recovery. Fortunately, though the wounds Panuroff had inflicted upon me were deep, they were by no means dangerous.
At the end of the week I was almost myself again. All the time, my strange little benefactor was indefatigable in his attentions, and pretended to take a wonderful interest in myself and my welfare. Among other peculiarities, he was as inquisitive as an old woman, and before I had known him a week, he had not only drawn from me the name of my antagonist (whom I was rejoiced to hear had fled the settlement, believing he had killed me), but had made himself conversant with my passion for Juanita. On his own side he was more reticent, and do what I would, I could not draw out of him either his business on the island, or in fact anything important connected with himself or his affairs. That he had seen more of the world than even the majority of those who consider themselves great travellers, I soon gathered; that he was for some years in Chili, was another thing I discovered. But beyond these two small circumstances, I could learn nothing of his past. One obligation he imposed in return for what he had done for me, and that was, that I should never mention him to any living soul, and especially not to Juanita.
"Why especially not to Juanita?" I asked, surprised that he should bring her into the matter.
"Because women wonder, and when they wonder they pry, and when they pry they make mischief, and when they make mischief they're the devil, and there isn't room for Satan and me in this house."
He paused for a minute, his twinkling little eyes watching me all the time, and then went on—