"Yes; I came for that purpose."
"We's allers ready to fight in a good cause," remarked Moses, just before filling his mouth with rice.
"Or to die in it!" added Verkimier, engulfing the breast of a chicken at a bite. "But as zee pirates are not expected for some days, ve may as veil go after zee mias—zat is what zee natifs call zee orang-utan. It is a better word, being short."
Moses glanced at the professor out of the corners of his black eyes and seemed greatly tickled by his enthusiastic devotion to business.
"I am also," continued the professor, "extremely anxious to go at zee booterflies before—"
"You die," suggested Nigel, venturing on a pleasantry, whereat Moses opened his mouth in a soundless laugh, but, observing the professor's goggles levelled at him, he transformed the laugh into an astounding sneeze, and immediately gazed with pouting innocence and interest at his plate.
"Do you alvays sneeze like zat?" asked Verkimier.
"Not allers," answered the negro simply, "sometimes I gibs way a good deal wuss. Depends on de inside ob my nose an' de state ob de wedder."
What the professor would have replied we cannot say, for just then a Dyak youth rushed in to say that an unusually large and gorgeous butterfly had been seen just outside the village!
No application of fire to gunpowder could have produced a more immediate effect. The professor's rice was scattered on the floor, and himself was outside the head-house before his comrades knew exactly what was the matter.