"Are there ferns out there where you are going if you get well, Mr.
Rhys? new ones?"
"I have no doubt of it."
"Then you will gather them and dry them, won't you?"
"I think it is very possible I may."
"I wish you wouldn't go! O Mr. Rhys, tell Eleanor about that place; she don't know about it. Tell her what you told me."
He did; perhaps to fill up the time and take Eleanor's attention from herself for the moment. He gave a short account of the people in question; a people of fine physical and even fine mental development, for savages; inhabiting a country of great beauty and rich natural resources; but at the same time sunk in the most abject depths of moral debasement. A country where the "works of the devil" had reached their utmost vigour; where men lived but for vile ends, and took the lives of their fellow-men and each other with the utmost ruthlessness and carelessness and horrible cruelty; and more than that, where they dishonoured human life by abusing, and even eating, the forms in which human life had residence. It was a terrible picture Mr. Rhys drew, in a few words; so terrible, that it did take Eleanor's attention from all else for the time.
"Is other life safe there?" she asked. "Do the white people who go there feel themselves secure?"
"I presume they do not."
"Then why go to such a horrible place?"
"Why not?" he asked. "The darker they are, the more they want light."