“No,” said the man. “I can not. If he is lost, it is his own fault. The natives would have guided him safely back to the Citadel and perhaps he would have brought back with him that which he could not have carried, though I dare say he is a very strong boy.”
The man’s talk got Curlie in more and more of a tangle. He had assumed that Johnny had been kidnapped. But here was a man saying the natives were his friends bent on loading him down with presents he could not carry alone.
All this was too much for Curlie’s weary mind to grasp. In an effort to think it through, he looked down at his feet. When he looked up once more, the short, broad man was gone. He had vanished into the night.
CHAPTER XIII
CRUSOES FOR A NIGHT
As the three companions, Johnny, Doris and Nieta sat upon the mossy bank beneath the palms waiting for the dawn on that mysterious island. Johnny was not the only one to indulge in long, long thoughts. Doris came in for her full share.
“It’s strange,” she told herself, as a little thrill ran through her, “to be camping here on an island we have never seen. Who can say what wild creatures may roam these forests? Time was when whole herds of wild cattle wandered peacefully over our own dry plains or went charging madly up the steep slopes to escape some pursuer.”
As she sat there amid the silence, she fancied all manner of strange and unusual things, yet a stout heart held her nerves steady. Fortunately her mind was fresh. Sleep on the boat had done much for her. She was ready for another day and whatever it might bring. So she sat there listening to the voice of the jungle.
Night brings its changes to a tropical island. At night a thousand creatures, too torpid or too timid to face the light of day, fare forth in search of food. Strange mouselike rodents, and those resembling rabbits, sport in the spots where moonlight falls. The short-nosed wild pig comes forth from his dark retreat to root around among the ferns and shrubs. More fearsome creatures there are too: yellow snakes and great, brown lizards.
All this Doris knew, yet, strangely enough, she experienced no tremor of fear. Not so strange after all perhaps: for was not Johnny Thompson close at hand? It is strange this confidence of a girl in the strength of a boy; her utter confidence in his power to defend her from the beasts of the jungle, from a hidden enemy, yes, from the very lightning bolts that shoot from the sky.
Perhaps, as she sat there, eyes half closed, part asleep, part awake, the girl dreamed of the time when she should have a man who was all her own, and a home. For, long ago she had learned that the best of life’s good things come to those who have a roof, a kitchen, a hearthfire they can call their own.