"Me want you," he said.
"Quite so," muttered Holman, "but I got you first."
Maru smiled the smile of the man who has a card up his sleeve, and he fumbled in the folds of his sulu till he found what he wanted. With a dramatic flourish he drew from the cloth a small emerald ring that belonged to Barbara Herndon, and he smiled childishly as he saw the look of astonishment upon Holman's face as he snatched the trinket.
"Why—who—how the devil did you get this?" he asked.
"Little missee give me," replied Maru, still convulsed with the humour which his childish mind found in the situation. "She tell me come alonga you."
Holman poured out a torrent of questions which the smiling messenger endeavoured to answer to the best of his ability. In pigeon English he informed us that he had deserted Leith's camp about midnight; that the big ruffian had turned abruptly from the direction he was moving in at the time we caught up with him, and that Holman's bullet had caused him serious inconvenience. The two girls and the Professor were in charge of Soma and the one-eyed white man, who, we now learned, was deaf and dumb. It was while One Eye was on guard that Barbara Herndon had been able to bribe the Raretongan to throw the strength of his muscles upon our side of the argument.
Holman, with lover-like longing for anything owned by the lady of his choice, attempted to put the emerald ring in his pocket, but Maru objected strongly. The smile fled from his face, and his broken English nearly strangled him in his efforts to pour out enough of it to acquaint Holman of the nature of the agreement which he had entered into with Barbara Herndon.
"Me only show you ring, that's all!" he cried. "You look, know little missee send me, ring mine all time. You give back."
"You had better give it back to him," I cautioned. "He has got the idea into his head, and it will take a lot of arguing to convince him that Miss Barbara didn't give it to him to keep."
"But she didn't!" cried Holman. "Why would she give him a ring? She just gave him a loan of it to let him see that she had sent him to us."