LORD LOAM. I was washed ashore, my dear, clinging to a hencoop. How awful that first night was.
LADY MARY. Poor father.
LORD LOAM. When I woke, I wept. Then I began to feel extremely hungry. There was a large turtle on the beach. I remembered from the Swiss Family Robinson that if you turn a turtle over he is helpless. My dears, I crawled towards him, I flung myself upon him—(here he pauses to rub his leg)—the nasty, spiteful brute.
LADY MARY. You didn’t turn him over?
LORD LOAM (vindictively, though he is a kindly man). Mary, the senseless thing wouldn’t wait; I found that none of them would wait.
CATHERINE. We should have been as badly off if Crichton hadn’t—
LADY MARY (quickly). Don’t praise Crichton.
LORD LOAM. And then those beastly monkeys, I always understood that if you flung stones at them they would retaliate by flinging cocoa-nuts at you. Would you believe it, I flung a hundred stones, and not one monkey had sufficient intelligence to grasp my meaning. How I longed for Crichton.
LADY MARY (wincing). For us also, father?
LORD LOAM. For you also. I tried for hours to make a fire. The authors say that when wrecked on an island you can obtain a light by rubbing two pieces of stick together. (With feeling.) The liars!