Part 45 (1/2)

”Beesiness, sah, beesiness,” replied the prime minister. ”Wot dis wo'ld be widout beesiness, tell me dat?”

Carrambo held his head a little to one side and both open palms out in front of him.

As, however, the question was too philosophical in its nature, Duncan made no reply.

”'Scuse me one moment, sah.”

He hurried away, and presently afterwards reappeared from behind a hut, dragging a poor little naked girl by one hand.

”You take lifel and s'oot de chile,” he said. ”She foh de king's dinner. Dis will make one good implession on dese pore ignolant savages.”

This might have been true, but Duncan nevertheless did not see his way to become the king's executioner.

He shot a fowl, however, and at the flash and report the savages, who had never seen white men before, and never heard the sound of a gun, screamed wildly, and rushed off with such precipitation, that they seemed to be all a mist of long black scraggy legs and arms.

But Carrambo's voice recalled them, and they returned awed and terror-struck.

The dead fowl, moreover, was evidence of the terrible power possessed by these great ”children of the air”.

What might they not do next?

These innocent wretches trembled to think. I call them innocent simply because they knew not sin.

”If then,” says the apostle, ”knowing these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”

For knowledge brings with it responsibility, and this neglected is accounted to us as sin.

This night our young heroes spent in the car of the balloon, and honest Viking went on guard. But even if the savages--for savages they were of the most demoniacal type--possessed any longing to do them to death, fear, natural and supernatural, deterred them.

Next morning early, Carrambo, the king's prime minister, departed upon his long and dangerous mission, taking two young warriors with him, and promising faithfully to return in two weeks at the farthest.

”S'pose you not see me den,” he added sententiously, ”den I gone deaded foh tlue.”

The place seemed more lonesome now that Carrambo had gone, for, scoundrel though he undoubtedly was, he was someone to speak to.

They now began seriously to consider their situation and prospects.

In their heart of hearts they believed that they had been the means of sending succour to their marooned s.h.i.+pmates, on that lonely isle of the ocean. Their minds were easy enough on that score, for if even the steamer they had hailed had resumed her course without making any attempt to find the isle and rescue the mariners, the Sultan of Lamoo, Duncan fully understood, had always been friendly with the British, and would immediately despatch a.s.sistance in some shape or other.

Duncan, before doing anything else, got out his instruments of observation, and as well as could be made out, the glen in which they were virtually imprisoned was between two and three hundred miles off the coast, and some degrees south of the line.

He was puzzled at first as to why the place had never been discovered by British explorers.

But there are hundreds of such tribe-lands that have never yet been trodden by the foot of Christian men.

There was one clue to the mystery, however, and this was probably the true one, but they did not find it out just then.

”Now,” said Duncan, ”for a visit of ceremony to that fat old pig of king. And we must take him some presents, too.”