A Daughter of Astrea by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Author:E. Phillips Oppenheim [Oppenheim, E. Phillips]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440544293
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1898-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

OVER breakfast I told Maurice the whole story of my adventure. We continued discussing it long afterwards, lounging in low chairs on deck and smoking — I my pipe and Maurice innumerable cigars. Somehow Maurice took it a little more seriously than I had expected. His first half-impatient query remained unanswered — a somewhat perplexing problem:

“What the mischief are we going to do with the girl?” That was without doubt a quandary, and a rather awkward one. However, as I explained to Maurice, I had scarcely as yet exchanged a dozen sentences with her. We need not take it for granted that she was friendless, or that she had lived on the island since her childhood. The probabilities all seemed to point the other way. There was nothing in the least uncouth about her appearance or manners. She spoke the purest English, with just a slight American accent.

“I daresay,” I remarked, carefully refilling my pipe, “that she has plenty of friends in India, and will be only too glad to be landed at Colombo. In any case, I don’t think that she will be much of a burden to us.”

“It isn’t exactly that,” Maurice said. “Only one gets so sick of women on shore, that it has been a perfect luxury to be absolutely free from them for a while. I am a little superstitious too,” he remarked calmly. “I always look upon a single woman as country people do upon a magpie! They bring bad luck. By-the-by, that reminds me! There’s a man on board wants to talk to you.”

Maurice blew his silver whistle. The boatswain came hurrying forward.

“Send Hooley here,” Maurice ordered.

In a minute or two Hooley stood before us. He had a squat but honest face, and he wore earrings, He was evidently much embarrassed.

“This fellow knows all about your delightful island,” Maurice said, turning to me. “You have been there often, the first mate tells me, Hooley.”

The man pulled his cap respectfully.

“I’ve been there, sir,” he answered. “Two years ago was my last trip there. I was mate on a Rangoon trading vessel running to the Philippines, and we used to call there regularly. Very go-ahead people for niggers, sir!”

“So I found them,” I remarked drily.

“You’d have been all right with them, sir, begging your pardon, sir, if you hadn’t run amuck with them on the religious tack. There’s no shifting them off that. The Czar of Russia ain’t no more a despot than that High Priest of theirs. If he told ‘em all to cut their throats they’d do it. Begging your pardon, sir,” the man continued, turning more directly to me, “there’s some talk amongst the men, as how you’d half-killed him and brought the young woman away out of the Temple!”

I nodded.

“Something like that did happen,” I admitted.

“It was a rare plucky thing to do, sir, begging your pardon, sir,” the man said gravely; “but — but — ”

I looked up at him from the depths of my chair. His face was troubled and perplexed.

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