They quickly joined the man in white. He was surveying the boys with a look of bewilderment on his pallid face.
“You do not look so terrible as heem!” they heard him say, in what might be considered a conciliatory tone.
“Who are you?” asked Phil, getting down to business at once.
“François Lavelle,” came the prompt answer, as the chef drew himself up with a bit of perhaps unconscious pride.
“Are you Mr. Bodman’s cook?” asked Ethan, curiously.
“I am ze French chef,” he was instantly told, as though there might be a vast difference; “I haf serve him for five years; and he would not even come up to zis heathen country unless François he accompany heem to serve ze meals he adores.”
“What has been going on over here? We heard all sorts of noises from our camp, as though there was murder being done; and so we’ve come across country to find out what it meant?”
When Phil said this the chef shivered, and drew up his shoulders in a ridiculous fashion that Ethan afterwards used to recall with shouts of laughter, it seemed so comical.
“If zere haf not been murder done,” he said, solemnly, “it haf been because pouf! I run so fast. Begar! zat devil haf murder in hees eyes.”
“Then the dog did go mad?” burst out Ethan wonderingly.