“Here, Beppo,” he spoke to a bronze native, “bring us some of that roasted guinea hen and boiled plantain.”
When Curlie had eaten and had fed his donkeys from a bundle of wild grass, the little doctor told him as much as he deemed best of Johnny’s latest adventure. He showed him the Magic Telescope and bade him make himself at home.
Hardly had he finished speaking when a bronze native, panting and quite done in by running, dropped at his feet. When this man found his breath he told a startling tale of a black, ape-like horde of men, armed with clubs, machetes and rifles who were marching upon the cave.
“Now what?” said the doctor, turning to Curlie for an answer. “We are a peaceful people. Have you brought this mob to attack us?”
Curlie’s eyes went wide with wonder. The whole affair was news to him. A few well directed questions and he knew the worst. The leader of this band was none other than Pluto, the bad black man whose shipload of arms he had sunk. The others were his followers. That they were bent on vengeance he did not doubt.
“There’s no time for explaining now,” he said springing to his feet and seizing a heavy hamper. “Those men are not my friends but my enemies. I think you may leave them to me. But if your men will carry all these heavy hampers into the cave, it will help.”
“‘There is a destiny’,” he quoted to himself, “‘that shapes our ends’. A moment ago I was thinking what a lot of wasted toil it had been, urging those stubborn donkeys up this trail. But now—”
Ten minutes later he found himself busy erecting in the mouth of the cave a figure that was as fear-inspiring to the timid bronze men as he hoped it might be to the black horde.
This figure it was that had absorbed so much of his thought and occupied his hours in his laboratory at the Citadel.
* * * * * * * *