David laughed. “You just wait and see,” said he.
Billy Topsail’s reasons were no doubt connected with an encounter with a gigantic devil-fish at Birds’ Nest Islands, as related in “The Adventures of Billy Topsail.”
CHAPTER XIII
In Which There Are Too Many Knocks At the Gate, a Stratagem Is Successful, Red Feather Draws a Tomahawk, and an Indian Girl Appears On the Scene
“McLeod turned on his heel and went to the shop,” David continued; “and when he had ordered a watch to be kept on the clearing on all sides, we devoted ourselves to the matter in hand––the preparation of the regular quarterly statement for the officials at headquarters. But as we laboured, hatchets, knives and the cruel, evil faces of the savages, by whom, as I chose to think, we were threatened, mixed themselves with the figures, to my bewilderment.
“Soon the dusk came, and while I trimmed and lighted the candles in the shadowy outer room there seemed to be shapes in the corners which I had never seen there in quieter times. McLeod, however, was unperturbed. He had forgotten all about the numerous band which he stood ready to defy.