“Good morning,” I said without advancing to him; “take that chair over there, please. I just want to look at this fellow's head for a moment.”
He stalked over to the chair I indicated and sat down, and a sudden spasm of rage distorted his face when he saw Niâbon. She was seated at the further end of the room, her chin resting on her hand, and looking at him so steadily and fixedly that he could not but have resented her gaze, even if his mind were undisturbed by passion. Tematau, too, turned his head, and shot his master a glance of such deadly fury that I murmured to him to keep quiet. I rapidly revolved in my mind what course to pursue with our visitor, who, though I could not see his face, was, I felt, watching my every movement.
“That will do,” I said to my patient in the island dialect, which Krause understood and spoke thoroughly; “lie down again. In a few days thou wilt be able to walk.”
“By God, he's going to walk now,” said Krause, rising suddenly, and speaking in a low, trembling tone. I motioned to him to sit down again. He shook his head and remained standing, his brawny hand grasping the back of the chair to steady himself, for every nerve in his body was quivering with excitement.
“What is the matter, Mr. Krause?” I said coldly, though I was hot enough against him, for he was armed with a brace of navy revolvers, belted around his waist. “Won't you sit down?”
“No, I won't sit down,” he answered rudely.
“Very well, then, stand,” I said, seating myself near him.
Then I pointed to the pistols in his belt. “Mr. Krause, before you tell me the business which has brought you here, I should like to know why you enter my house carrying arms? It is a most extraordinary thing that one white man should call on another armed with a brace of pistols, especially when the island is quiet, and white men's lives are as safe here as they would be in London or Berlin.”
“I brought my pistols with me because I thought I might have trouble with the natives over that fellow there,” he said sullenly, pointing to Tematau.
“Then you might have left them outside; I object most strongly to any one marching into my house in the manner you have done.”