“Do you always 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.
“He’s always like that,” said the hermit, with a slight twinkle in his eyes. “Nothing discourages—nothing subdues him. Twice I pulled him out of deadly danger into which he had run in his eager pursuit of specimens. And he has returned the favour to me, for he rescued me once when a mias had got me down and would certainly have killed me, for my gun was empty at the moment, and I had dropped my knife.”
“Is, then, the orang-utan so powerful and savage?”
“Truly, yes, when wounded and driven to bay,” returned the hermit. “You must not judge of the creature by the baby that Verkimier has tamed. A full-grown male is quite as large as a man, though very small in the legs in proportion, so that it does not stand high. It is also very much stronger than the most powerful man. You would be quite helpless in its grip, I assure you.”
“I hope, with the professor,” returned Nigel, “that we may have a hunt after them, either before or after the arrival of the pirates. I know he is very anxious to secure a good specimen for some museum in which he is interested—I forget which.”
As he spoke, the youth who had brought information about the butterfly returned and said a few words to Moses in his native tongue.
“What does he say?” asked Niger.