Then, noting that Colonel North had just stepped out on deck from his stateroom, Captain Cortland added hastily:
"Pardon me; I wish to speak with the commanding officer."
As colonel and captain met they exchanged salutes.
"I told Draney, sir, that I wished to speak with you," Captain Cortland reported, in a low voice. "I did not tell him, however, that I wished to speak with you mainly as a pretext for getting away from his society."
"You don't like Draney?" smiled Colonel North, eying his captain shrewdly.
"I certainly do not," Cortland confessed.
"And I'm almost as certain that I don't, either," replied the regimental commander. "However, Cortland, we shall have to treat him with a fair amount of courtesy, for Draney is an influential man down in the part of the world for which we are headed. He is influential with the Moros, I mean. Often he is in a position to give the military authorities useful information of intended native mischief. Draney is a very big planter, you know, and white planters are somewhat scarce in the Moro country. It is one of the great disappointments of our government that more American capital is not invested in establishing great plantations in the extremely rich Moro country. But, as you know, Cortland, some of the Moro dattos are given to heading sudden, unexpected and very desperate raids on white planters, and that fact has discouraged Americans, Englishmen and Germans from investing millions and millions of capital in the Moro country."
"Yet the fellow Draney is a planter there, sir?"
"Draney owns half a dozen very successful plantations."
"And is he never molested by the Moros, sir?" inquired Captain Cortland.