I was fortunate enough to get some specimens that had never been seen before, and I was returning to the coast. My engineer and I were captured when ashore one night getting fuel for our furnace. They took us into the forest a long way, binding our hands with the fiber of one of the creepers, and I had no trouble whatever gathering that it was their intention to make a feast of us--a sort of high tea, it was to be, for they began brewing the herbs which I knew they used only when they were cannibalizing. We were courteously permitted to watch these preparations, for it was rightly assumed that they would be in some degree interesting to us. We were, indeed, greatly interested in all we saw, but much more so when, toward evening, a number of the natives arrived on the scene carrying with them some of the stores which they had found aboard the steam launch. They broke open with a stone hatchet some tins of preserved meat, and seemed to enjoy the contents greatly. The biscuits they didn't care for much, and the cakes of soap which they began to eat could not honestly be said to be an entire success as comestibles. But while we watched them at these /hors d'oeuvres/ to the banquet at which we were expected to take a prominent part, a straggler came up with some reserve supplies; I saw them; tins of dynamite--we carried dynamite for blowing up the snags that obstructed the narrower reaches of the river. We watched the thieves crowd around the bearer of the tins, and we saw that the general impression that prevailed in regard to them was that they had come upon some of the most highly concentrated beef they had ever had in their hands. When they laid the tins among the hot ashes of their fires and began to break them open with their stone hatchets, my engineer thought with me that all the interest there would be in the subsequent proceedings could not possibly compensate us for the waste of precious time which would be entailed by our remaining. We bolted in spite of our fettered hands, but before we had got more than a couple of hundred yards from the camp, there took place the severest earthquake, coincidental with a thunderstorm and the salute of a battery of a thousand heavy guns. We were whirled into the air like feathers in a breeze, but managed to cling--our bonds being broken--to some of the boughs among which we found ourselves. Shortly afterward, a quarter of an hour or so, there came on the heaviest shower I had ever experienced. Such a downpour of branches of trees, gnarled roots, broken fruits, birds' feathers, mutilated apes of many species, and--well, anatomical specimens! It went on and on until the boughs around us were made into splinters and we were beaten to the ground with the force of those missiles, all the dense forest around us echoing to the shrieks of the lories and parrots, the monkeys and the wildcats."
"And now the missionaries," said Ella, after a pause.
"And what happened after that?" whispered Phyllis.
He shook his head.
"After that we came away," he said. "We couldn't see that there was any need for us to stay loafing about the forest when we had our business to mind in another direction. It took us two days, however, finding our launch."
"And that is what the missionaries call your dynamite outrage against the natives?" said Ella.
"So it would seem," said he. "I suppose they managed to get some account of the business; one can't hush up a dynamite outrage even in the interior of New Guinea."
"But what a gross misrepresentation of facts it was to say that you had massacred the natives," cried Phyllis indignantly.
He laughed with a shrug.
"Oh, we must all live," he said.
"Unless those who treat tins of dynamite as though they were tins of brawn," said Ella. Then turning to Phyllis she smiled.
Phyllis had no difficulty interpreting the smile.
"Yes," she said, "your opinion was quite correct: Mr. Courtland doesn't care what people say, and it doesn't matter in the least what they do say, or what falsehoods are spread abroad."
"Not in the smallest degree," said Ella. "Herbert Courtland is still Herbert Courtland."
"But so far as I can gather," said Mr. Courtland, "all that the missionaries said of me was substantially correct."
"Read the paper and you will see how detestably false all the charges are," cried Phyllis, rising,--the servants had now left the room,--and picking up the /Spiritual Aneroid/ from where Ella had laid it on a chair.
Herbert Courtland had not yet opened it. He took it from her, saying:
"Thank you, Miss Ayrton. But I really don't see that it concerns me very much whether or not the charges brought against me are true or false. The matter is certainly one for the--the--ah--/Spiritual Aneroid/ and its special /clientele/."
"But a question is to be asked about it in the House of Commons. I said so just now," cried Phyllis.
"And even the House of Commons doesn't matter much," said Ella.
"That is what papa thought," said Phyllis meekly. "Only I know that if Mr. Courtland thought it worth noticing, papa would be quite pleased to put a counter question. That is why I came here to-day."
"It was so good of you," said the man.
"My Phyllis is all that is good. Let us return to the drawing room," said Ella, rising.
They returned to the drawing room; but when they had been in the apartment for perhaps four minutes, certainly not five, Phyllis said it was necessary for her to hurry home in order that the afternoon letters should be sent to her father at the House.
With another word of appreciation of her kindness, Mr. Courtland held her hand a second longer than was absolutely necessary to maintain a character for civility.
"She is the most charming girl in the world," remarked Ella to the visitor, who remained when Phyllis had left.
"Is she?" said he.
"I know it. Don't you?" asked she.
"How do I know?" he said. "I have thought nothing about it. If you say she is charming, I am pleased to hear it. It matters no more to me that the world is full of charming girls than that the kraken is still at the bottom of the sea. One woman fills all my thoughts. My heart is full of her."
"And you want her to risk the salvation of her soul for you?"
"Yes; that is just what I want."
He remained with her for another hour.
