"What," inquired the little man indignantly, "are you trying to do? Pick a fight?"
St. George looked at him in surprise.
"Because if you are," continued little Cawthorne without preamble, "we're three to one. And three of us are going to Yaque. We'll put you ashore if you say so."
St. George smiled at him gratefully.
"No--Bennietod?" inquired Little Cawthorne.
Bennietod, pale and manifestly weak, grinned cheerfully and fumbled in sudden abashment at an amazing checked Ascot which he had derived from unknown sources.
"Bes' t'ing t'ever I met up wid," he assented, "ef de deck'd lay down levil. I'm de sonny of a sea-horse if it ain't."
"Amory?" demanded the little man.
Amory looked along his pipe and took it briefly from his lips and shook his head.
"Don't say these things," he pleaded in his pleasant drawl, "or I'll swear something horrid."
St. George merely held his pipe by the bowl and nodded a little, but the hearts of all of them glowed.
After dinner they sat long on deck. Rollo, at his master's invitation, joined them with a mandolin, which he had been discovered to play considerably better than any one else on board. Rollo sat bolt upright in a reclining chair to prove that he did not forget his station and strummed softly, and acknowledged approval with: "Yes, sir. A little music adds an air to any occasion, I always think, sir."
The moon was not yet full, but its light in that warm world was brilliant. The air was drowsy and scented with something that might have been its own honey or that might have come from the strange blooms, water-sealed below. Now and then St. George went aside for a space and walked up and down the deck or sent below for Jarvo. Once, as Jarvo left St. George's side, Little Cawthorne awoke and sat upright and inquiring, in his hammock.
"What is the matter with his feet?" he inquired peevishly. "I shall certainly ask him directly."
"It's the seventh day out," Amory observed, "and still nobody knows."
For Jarvo and Akko had another distinction besides their diminutive stature and greyhound build. Their feet, clad in soft soleless shoes, made of skins, were long and pointed and of almost uncanny flexibility. It had become impossible for any one to look at either of the little men without letting his eyes wander to their curiously expressive feet, which, like "courtier speech," were expressive without revealing anything.
"I t'ink," Bennietod gave out, "dat dey're lost Eyetalian organ-grinder monkeys, wid huming intelligence, like Bertran's Bimi."
"What a suspicious child it is," yawned Little Cawthorne, and went to sleep again. Toward midnight he awoke, refreshed and happy, and broke into instant song: "The daylight may do for the gay, The thoughtless, the heartless, the free, But there's something about the moon's ray--"