Wrong, of course; but I was an angry and jealous man.
I saw her once more before we sailed, but could not move her. She was kind, gentle with me, and sorrowful, but obedient to the influence of Dartmoor, with no will but his. So I gave it up for the time, trusting not to a watery grave to break his influence but to his absence from her.
We transferred the freak by night and lodged it in the hold, where I had built a sort of enclosure under the cabin trunk for the apparatus. Dartmoor brought a couple of his servants along to carry on the daily exercising, and my Kanaka crew expressed no curiosity concerning the strange weights they hoisted over the side at midnight. So, we got away without trouble.
Whether or not Dartmoor exercised any mental influence over me I do not know. I felt a healthy hatred for him as the man who had taken the woman I loved, but I could not bring myself to quarrel with him. He could not force me to like him, but possibly he disarmed my resentment by his kindly feeling for me.
My island was a small affair, as islands go—merely the top of a submerged mountain—surrounded by a barrier reef with only one passage through it; and this entrance was known to no one but myself. Well up from the beach I had erected huts for my coolie divers and a comfortable house for myself on the high ground near a spring of water.
Here I purposed to install Dartmoor and the freak; but I wondered, grimly and ungenerously, as I steered through the dangerous passage and glanced at a dismantled hulk wrecked on the reef during my absence, as to the chances of anybody getting off that island without my consent.
As we let go the anchor, a man pulled out in a small dingey I kept for exploring the lagoon and climbed aboard. He was tall, elderly, and mild of face and manner.
"Glad to see a white face again," he said as he offered me his hand. "You are the captain, I believe—the white chief of these poor heathen. I am Mr. Pfeffer, a seagoing missionary, and my little craft was wrecked here last week while trying to make the passage in a storm. I am the only one saved, and I owe my life to your divers. They have been very kind to me, a shipwrecked wayfarer, and I would like to remain among them a while, if it is possible for me to do so."
"Stay as long as you like, Mr. Pfeffer," I answered. "Convert us all, if you like; but there's a critter down below that's proof, I'll warrant."
He asked questions, and Dartmoor explained. Then the missionary inspected the monstrosity.