"It's nothing of the kind," Nikobo contradicted him sharply. "Can't you see he is white and has teeth as straight as your own instead of tusks? He's not like the Leopard Men at all."
"But who put him in this cage? What's he done, and what's he doing here?" Slipping off Nikobo's back, Ato pressed his face close to the bars of the strange prison.
"I am waiting for my people to come and rescue me," stated the boy, rising with great dignity from his bed of grass. Folding his arms, he looked haughtily out at the explorers. "Who are these men, Nikobo?" he inquired sternly. "Why have you brought them here?"
"Because they seemed friendly and speak your language," puffed the hippopotamus, beaming lovingly at her small charge. "Because I thought they might break these bars and set you free. They have a hollow log seventy times as large as the hollowed logs of the Leopard Men. In this they could easily carry you over the waters and back to your own people. I've tried to break this miserable hutch dozens of times," explained Nikobo, turning to Samuel Salt. "But the saplings are sunk so deep, I've been afraid I'd crush Tandy as well as the cage if I pushed too hard."
"Quite likely," said Samuel Salt, rapping the bars with his knuckles. "We'll have to fetch an ax from the ship. But who shut you up here, little Lubber, and how long have you been prisoner on this island?"
"Five months and a half," answered the boy after consulting one of the bars in the corner of his cage. "I've made a nick in this bar with my teeth for every day I have been here."
"Well, that's all over now, you poor child, you!" Ato's voice shook with indignation as he looked in at the little boy whose every rib showed plainly under the skin. In fact, a heap of grass and dried roots in the cage made the kind-hearted monarch shudder with distaste and sympathy. "You shall come with us and eat like a King," he promised, nodding his head cheerfully, "and learn to be an able-bodied seaman to boot." Instead of looking grateful or pleased, the boy whom the hippopotamus had called "Tandy" merely stood looking between the bars of his cage.
"Why should I go with you?" he said finally and wearily. "You look wild and dangerous to me, and far worse than the Leopard Men. Here, at least I have Kobo to take care of me, and who knows what further perils and hardships I should suffer at sea?"
"Ho! HO! And how do you like that, my lads?" Roger rocked backward and forward on Samuel Salt's shoulder. "The young one speaks truly. If you could but see yourselves, my Hearties." Now both Ato and Samuel had forgotten their plunge in the river, but with their hair and clothing still covered with mud and slime they looked the veriest rogues and rascals. And while Ato regarded himself with embarrassment and discomfiture, Samuel took a quick step forward.