“How strange it is,” he said after a moment of silence. “Men may read your character, your mood, your very attitude toward life and your fellow men by your laugh. A boy torments a smaller boy by burning his bare foot with a hot stick. He laughs. How different is that laugh from a heart so full of pure joy that it needs must overflow with laughter.”
“There are people over there,” he repeated. “There’s no use prolonging the suspense. Either they are friendly natives or vicious savages. In either case there is nothing gained by delay. Humanity is very much the same everywhere. We are usurpers in their land. The best we can do is to march right up and say, ‘Howdy’. Let’s go.”
And away they marched.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MARINE KING
Of all the strange sights their heightened imaginations prepared them to behold, none, perhaps, could have so filled the minds of Doris and Johnny with astonishment as that which they saw when, having passed a grove of cocoanuts and a clump of low growing palms, they came to a broad clearing.
Before them was a circle of hard trodden sand. Standing there were more than a hundred natives.
In the center, and to all appearances king of them all, was a man seated upon a throne of hand-hewn mahogany. On the head of this man was a battered crown and in his hand an ebony stick, which one might assume was used as a scepter.
Most astonishing of all was the fact that the man was neither black nor brown, but white. And he was dressed in the olive drab uniform of an American Marine.
For one full moment they stood there, the boy and the two girls, unobserved, staring at this astounding revelation. Their reactions to the scene were strange. Johnny was scarcely able to resist a desire to laugh. Doris stood stock still, lips parted, pupils dilated, staring. Nieta felt an all but overpowering desire to turn and flee.
Then something happened. The strange king, on his stranger throne, turned his crowned head and looked squarely at them.