ss."

"Oh, I'm impert'nent, am I? That means fresh, maybe. I'm a plain
man and don't use frills on my langwidge. Well, when I meets a
little skirt that takes my eyes there ain't no harm in lettin' her
know it, is there? Maybe the Honorable could say it nicer--"

With a forward stride he laid a hand upon my arm. I shook him off
and stepped back. Fear clutched my throat. I had left my revolver
in my quarters. Oh, the dreadful denseness of these woods, the
certainty that no wildest cry of mine could pierce them!

And then Crusoe, who had been waiting quietly behind me in the
path, slipped in between us. Every hair on his neck was bristling.
The lifted upper lip snarled unmistakably. He gave me a swift
glance which said, _Shall I spring_?

Quite suddenly the gorilla blandishments of Captain Magnus came to
an end.

"Say," he said harshly, "hold back that dog, will you? I don't
want to kill the cur."

"You had better not," I returned coldly. "I should have to explain
how it happened, you know. As it is I shall say nothing. But I
shall not forget my revolver again when I go to walk."

And Crusoe and I went swiftly down the path which the captain no
longer disputed.

IX

"LASSIE, LASSIE. . ."

Two or three days later occurred a painful episode. The small
unsuspected germ of it had lain ambushed in a discourse of Mr.
Shaw's, delivered shortly after our arrival on the island, on the
multifarious uses of the cocoa-palm. He told how the juice from
the unexpanded flower-spathes is drawn off to form a potent toddy,
so that where every prospect pleases man may still be vile.
Cookie, experimentally disposed, set to work. Mr. Vane, also
experimentally, sampled the results of Cookie's efforts. The
liquor had merely been allowed to ferment, whereas a complicated
process is necessary for the manufacture of the true arrack, but
enough had been achieved to bring about dire consequences for
Cuthbert Vane, who had found the liquid cool and refreshing, and
was skeptical about its potency.

Aunt Jane took the matter very hard, and rebuked the ribald mirth
of Mr. Tubbs. He had to shed tears over a devastating poem called
"The Drunkard's Home," before she would forgive him. Cookie made
his peace by engaging to vote the prohibition ticket at the next
election. My own excuses for the unfortunate were taken in very
ill part. My aunt said she had always understood that life in the
tropics was very relaxing