“Nothing,” answered Andy. “I was trying to look. But this Timbado?”
“It’s a story,” answered his companion—“one that has never been written. I’ll tell it you this evening.”
Instantly, and for the first time since he had landed, the tragic tale of Ba, the colored man, rushed into Andy’s thoughts. Startled by his unexpected proximity to the scene of Ba’s horrible experience, his hand had moved and the machine had wavered. Then, as the fragmentary story came back to him, he recalled this important detail of it—the man who had sent the simple, half savage Ba to steal the great pink pearl was “an English captain who lived on Andros Island.”
“Thank you,” answered the boy at last. “I’ll be glad to hear it, Mr.—”
“Pardon me,” said the man instantly; “didn’t I mention my name? I am Captain Monckton Bassett.”
[CHAPTER XVI]
THE CANNIBAL KING AND THE PINK PEARL
The swift tropic night had fallen, and the black sky was aglow with winking stars—miniature moons that turned key, reef, and water into a phosphorescent glow. Out of the silence came only the weird songs of the black boatmen gathered about the camp fire at the hut under the palms. On the schooner the evening meal was over, and Andy sat almost lost in dreams, while his host drew on his after-dinner cigar.
When Andy and Captain Bassett had landed, after their aerial flight into the cove, it was nearly dusk. The boy suggested that he would at once dismantle his machine and take it aboard the schooner, to be carried to his host’s home on Andros Island, and thence to Nassau and the steamer. After his nerve-wrecking flight in the afternoon, he did not feel equal to another sky voyage of perhaps one hundred and fifty miles.