safe for
unarmed men like him and the Finn."

"Did his terror seem quite real, or do you think it was at all
exaggerated?" I asked.

"Oh no," asserted Billy, with conviction; "it was real enough, and it
wasn't exaggerated either; he was in a regular funk. You see, he and
Svorenssen had a pretty bad time, one way and another, all the time they
were on West Island; but it was the apes that frightened them worst of
all."

"Yes," I agreed, "I can quite understand that; but,"--as an idea
suggested itself to me--"do you think Van Ryn suspects that you repeat
these conversations of his to me?"

"N-o, I don't think so," answered the boy. "Why should he. I don't
believe such a thought ever enters his head."

I did not feel by any means so sure of that as Billy seemed to be. If
the man suspected that his remarks and questionings were repeated to me,
his assumption of extreme stupidity might be explained as designed to
disarm any suspicion aroused in my mind by the queer character of some
of his questions. Take those relating to the arrangement of the house,
for example. The pretence that the information would be valuable to
him, should he ever again be cast away, was altogether too puerile for
consideration; he required the information--and very cleverly extracted
it from the unsuspecting Billy, too--for some entirely different reason.
But what was that reason? I wondered.

I was not long kept wondering.

The second night after the above-recorded conversation between Billy and
myself brought with it the threat of a change of weather. It had been
exceptionally hot all day, with less wind than usual, and there was a
languorous quality in the atmosphere that seemed to portend thunder, a
portent that was strengthened toward nightfall when the wind died away
to the merest zephyr, while a great bank of heavy, lowering cloud piled
itself up slowly along the eastern horizon so that the rising full moon
had no chance to show herself. As the evening progressed what little
air of wind there was died completely away, and we were left, with all
doors and windows flung wide open, gasping for breath, and sweltering as
in a Turkish bath. I endured it as long as I could, and then, tossing
aside the book I was attempting to read, announced my determination to
go down to the cove and have a swim.

Billy declared that he would like a swim too, if he could take a header
off the veranda into deep water; but as to walking down to t