“Yes,” he returned. “You are burned, too.”
Without further speech, he rose silently and disappeared in the jungle. He reappeared a short time later, carrying handfuls of the river mud. This he smeared thickly over Casson’s hands and face, tearing open the tattered shirt of the old naturalist to see if his chest was burned.
Then he vanished again, to return with more mud which he spread over his own burns. Then he sat down beside the old man for a few minutes of well-earned rest.
“The hut is bad,” he said, after a few moments of contemplation. “It is almost half gone. I will fix it.”
Cody Casson made no reply.
He was a frail old man, bent with the weight of what seemed at least seventy years. He had a finely shaped head and features that must have once been pleasing, though now deeply seamed with the wrinkles of exposure and hardship. His expression was kindly and benignant. His eyes were blue and had once been clear and penetrating, though now they had the bewildered vacuous look that comes to the half demented.
As he sat there now he seemed to be puzzling over something. Presently he looked up at Bomba with an expression that the boy knew well, having seen it there many times before.
The aged man was trying to remember, trying to recall something concerning past events of his own life of which Bomba knew nothing.
“You said”—Casson spoke slowly and painfully as though trying to force his thoughts to keep pace with his words—“you said something about—white men. You mean—what did you mean?”
A curious shyness fell on Bomba. He could not tell Cody Casson all that was in his mind concerning these white men, could not explain to him the vague but enchanting vistas this chance meeting with his kind had opened up to him. How could he explain to another what he could hardly explain to himself? He was a creature of the wild, inarticulate, feeling the more deeply because he had no words adequate to express his thoughts.