“Oh no,” answered Billy; “there were lots of other things he asked about. He wanted to know where we got Kit from, and how it is that he is so tame with us, and so savage with everybody else. He asked if we weren’t afraid that some day he would turn upon us and do us an injury. He said that if he was boss he’d shoot the beast right away; and he grumbled a bit because you wouldn’t give him and Svorenssen any firearms to defend themselves with, not only from the leopard but also from the natives, whom, he said, he didn’t trust a little bit, and who might come across any night and massacre us all in our sleep. Then he wanted to know how we are going to get the cutter into the water when she is ready for launching; and then—let me see—oh, yes, we got on about the natives again—and the apes. He said it was all very well for us who could bolt ourselves securely in the house at night; but what about him and Svorenssen if an ape should come across and surprise them in their tent some night? How were they to defend themselves without weapons of any kind? I laughed at that, and told him that there was so little likelihood of anything of that sort happening that we never closed our doors or windows, except when it rained. But he said that didn’t matter; we could defend ourselves if such a thing happened, because we had plenty of arms; and they ought to have some too. He said that, what with the leopard, the apes, and the savages, life was none too safe for unarmed men like him and the Finn.”
“Did his terror seem quite real, or do you think it was at all exaggerated?” I asked.
“Oh no,” asserted Billy, with conviction; “it was real enough, and it wasn’t exaggerated either; he was in a regular funk. You see, he and Svorenssen had a pretty bad time, one way and another, all the time they were on West Island; but it was the apes that frightened them worst of all.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “I can quite understand that; but,”—as an idea suggested itself to me—“do you think Van Ryn suspects that you repeat these conversations of his to me?”
“N–o, I don’t think so,” answered the boy. “Why should he. I don’t believe such a thought ever enters his head.”
I did not feel by any means so sure of that as Billy seemed to be. If the man suspected that his remarks and questionings were repeated to me, his assumption of extreme stupidity might be explained as designed to disarm any suspicion aroused in my mind by the queer character of some of his questions. Take those relating to the arrangement of the house, for example. The pretence that the information would be valuable to him, should he ever again be cast away, was altogether too puerile for consideration; he required the information—and very cleverly extracted it from the unsuspecting Billy, too—for some entirely different reason. But what was that reason? I wondered.
I was not long kept wondering.
The second night after the above-recorded conversation between Billy and myself brought with it the threat of a change of weather. It had been exceptionally hot all day, with less wind than usual, and there was a languorous quality in the atmosphere that seemed to portend thunder, a portent that was strengthened toward nightfall when the wind died away to the merest zephyr, while a great bank of heavy, lowering cloud piled itself up slowly along the eastern horizon so that the rising full moon had no chance to show herself. As the evening progressed what little air of wind there was died completely away, and we were left, with all doors and windows flung wide open, gasping for breath, and sweltering as in a Turkish bath. I endured it as long as I could, and then, tossing aside the book I was attempting to read, announced my determination to go down to the cove and have a swim.
Billy declared that he would like a swim too, if he could take a header off the veranda into deep water; but as to walking down to the cove in that heat—no; much as he would enjoy a dip he wasn’t prepared to undergo that amount of exertion to get it.
As the gathering storm seemed unlikely to break suddenly, I did not unduly hurry over my dip, but remained in the water about an hour, emerging at last delightfully cool, and quite ready for bed. Upon my return to the house I found Billy still up and poring over a book; but he confessed to feeling sleepy, upon which I ordered the boy off to bed forthwith and, extinguishing the lamp in the living-room, retired to my own apartment and straightway turned in; being quickly lulled to sleep by the sound of pouring rain that began just as I stretched myself upon my bed.