Robinson Crusoe had had, as yet, little time to do more than leave his footprints on the stretch of white sand sliding into the summer seas of Car Nicobar, and the tide washed those out very quickly. Wilder, lovelier, more brilliant were these islands than the Andamans, while the Andamanese and the Nicobarese proved to be separate races indeed, having no connection with one another.
Their very huts and canoes were secular in design. The Nicobarese names, marking the different islands on the map, fascinated Ferlie. Chowra, Teressa, Bompoka, Trinkat and Katehal of the Central Group, and Great and Little Nicobar, with their satellites, Kondul and Pulo Milo in the south, varied as to dialect in a language so primitive that, as the Reverend Gabriel Jellybrand mournfully complained, there seemed no words to express either "gratitude" or "forgiveness." Which abstract nouns once eliminated from the Christian religion, his sermons became uphill work.
For some years he had toiled in seclusion among this semi-civilized yellowish flock, of whom it was said that, until Christianity came to their territory, never one had been known to steal or lie.
Originally acknowledged to be of Indo-Chinese extraction, they were Malayan-Mongolian in type; often above average height, well-made, simple, lazy and cowardly, but very good-natured and polite to strangers.
This, then, was the people among whom Ferlie and Cyprian came, with their respective sons, to reflect upon the sequel to Eden's story and decide what parts they would play in it themselves.
Gabriel Jellybrand accepted their arrival as a direct answer to prayer, for he had been sick of a fever lately and very lonely. His weak green eyes, rounded like marbles behind an enormous pair of sun-glasses, protruded so unusually that Ferlie expected them to pop out and hit her when she made clear her ambition to choose the quietest corner of the quietest island and erect a row of Nicobarese huts.
The padre invariably fought a losing battle with the letter "w."
"But there is no need to do that," he persisted. "The little bungalow w-which the forest officer uses on inspection is standing empty. There w-won't be enough beds, but if you say you've brought hammocks—a most original idea!"
He led the way to the Settlement, clad in a cotton cassock, tied round with a black cord which swung out and scourged anybody who ventured too near him when he held up the garment to leap from rock to rock, revealing an expanse of white cotton sock below a short tussore trouser-leg.
From time to time he would lose his topee, and then a faithful bodyguard of Baptismal Candidates, palpably prepared for total immersion at any moment, would hasten to hand him a large khaki umbrella, lined with green, which they took it by turns to carry again after the topee had been recovered from the puddle or overhanging branch which had claimed it.