He was eager, too, for he suddenly recalled that he was bound on a very pleasant mission. Was he not to tell Ben Zook that at any time he wished he might leave the island for a place of trees, green grass, flowing water and a real cabin of fair dimensions? Small wonder that he hurried.
As he neared the shore his heart warmed at thought of the smile that would come to the face of the kindly, cheerful, little old man.
“Surely,” he thought to himself, “in spite of the fact that he’s a bit strange and uncouth, he’s a real gentleman after all and deserves a great deal more than is coming to him.”
He smiled as he thought of the little chicken coop Ben Zook had showed him. A low-roofed affair with a roost of bars about three feet long; five chickens on the roost, blinking at the light; a single goose in a corner with his head under his wing; this was Ben’s poultry house and his brood. There’d be more to it now—a real chicken house and perhaps a hundred fine fowls. It would be a Paradise for Ben Zook.
As he mused happily on these things his boat touched the shore. Springing out nimbly, he dragged the boat up the beach and turned his face toward Ben’s house.
At that moment, as a cloud passing over the moon sent a chill down his spine, something seemed to whisper to him that all was not well. That he might dispel this dark foreboding, he lifted up his voice in a cheery shout:
“Ben Zook! Oh, Ben Zook, I’m coming.”
The distant skyscrapers, like some mountainside, caught his words and flung them back to him, seeming at the same time to change his “Oh” to “old.”
“Ben Zook! Old Ben Zook!”
Again and again, more faintly, and yet more faintly: