The creature looked helplessly incapable, pitifully unwilling, scratching its side the while. Evidently it was a lazy monkey.
“Do you hear?” said Verkimier, sternly.
The orang moved uneasily, but still declined to go.
Turning sharply on it, the professor bent down, placed a hand on each of his knees and stared through the blue goggles into the animal’s face.
This was more than it could stand. With a very bad grace it hobbled off to the Durian tree, ascended it with a sort of lazy, lumbering facility, and hurled down some of the fruit without warning those below to look out.
“My little frond is obstinate sometimes,” remarked the naturalist, picking up the fruit, “but ven I bring my glasses to bear on him he always gives in, I never found zem fail. Come now; eat, an’ ve vill go to vork again. Ve must certainly find zee bootterflies somevere before night.”
But Verkimier was wrong. It was his destiny not to find the butterflies that night, or in that region at all, for he and his companion had not quite finished their meal when a Dyak youth came running up to them saying that he had been sent by the Rajah to order their immediate return to the village.
“Alas! ve most go. It is dancherous to disobey zee Rajah—ant I am sorry—very sorry—zat I cannot show you zee bootterflies to-day. No matter.—Go,” (to the Dyak youth), “tell your chief ve vill come. Better lock zee next time!”