“Were you born in this region, Van der Kemp?” asked Nigel, during a brief pause.
“I was—in Java. My father, as my name tells, was of Dutch descent. My mother was Irish. Both are dead.”
He stopped. The fire that had been aroused seemed to die down, and he continued to smoke with the sad absent look which was peculiar to him.
“And what about large game?” asked Nigel, anxious to stir up his friend’s enthusiasm again, but the hermit had sunk back into his usual condition of gentle dreaminess, and made no answer till the question had been repeated.
“Pardon me,” he said, “I was dreaming of the days that are gone. Ah! Nigel; you are yet too young to understand the feelings of the old—the sad memories of happy years that can never return: of voices that are hushed for ever. No one can know till he has felt!”
“But you are not old,” said Nigel, wishing to turn the hermit’s mind from a subject on which it seemed to dwell too constantly.
“Not in years,” he returned; “but old, very old in experience, and—stay, what was it that you were asking about? Ah, the big game. Well, we have plenty of that in some of the larger of the islands; we have the elephant, the rhinoceros, the tiger, the puma, that great man-monkey the orang-utan, or, as it is called here, the mias, besides wild pigs, deer, and innumerable smaller animals and birds—”
The hermit stopped abruptly and sat motionless, with his head bent on one side, like one who listens intently. Such an action is always infectious. Nigel and the negro also listened, but heard nothing.
By that time the fire had died down, and, not being required for warmth, had not been replenished. The faint light of the coming moon, which, however, was not yet above the horizon, only seemed to render darkness visible, so that the figure of Moses was quite lost in the shadow of the bush behind him, though the whites of his solemn eyes appeared like two glow-worms.
“Do you hear anything?” asked Nigel in a low tone.