“Not easily. Voalavo is one of those determined and hearty men who insist on all their friends enjoying themselves as they themselves do. To-morrow we may persuade him to let us go. Besides, I do not object to stay, for I intend to preach them a sermon on ungodliness and intemperance in the middle of the feast.”
Mark could scarcely forbear smiling at what he deemed the originality of the guide’s intention, as well as the quiet decision with which he stated it.
“Don’t you think,” he said, “that this way of bearding the lion in his den may rouse the people to anger?”
“I know not—I think not; but it is my business to be instant in season and out of season,” replied Ravonino, simply.
Mark said no more. He felt that he had to do with a Christian of a somewhat peculiar type, and thereafter he looked forward with not a little curiosity and some anxiety to the promised sermon. He was doomed, like the reader, to disappointment in this matter, for that night had not yet run into morning when an event occurred which modified and hastened the proceedings of himself and his friends considerably.
Chapter Eleven.
An Uninvited Guest appears with News that demands Instant Action.
The villagers and their guests were still in the midst of the feast, and the arrack had not yet begun to stimulate their imaginations, so that the deeds of their ancestors—which formed the chief subject of conversation—were still being recounted with some regard to modesty and truth, when Voalavo said to the assemblage, with a beaming countenance, that he had a treat in store for them.