“It’s too late fer me ever to belong, now,” he said ruefully. “Yeh gotta be borned to it. Gee! Wouldn’t I look funny in wite pants, an’ one o’ dem dinky, little ‘Willie-off-de-yacht’ lids?”
Even Barbara had to laugh at the picture the man’s words raised to her imagination.
“I didn’t mean that,” she hastened to explain. “I didn’t mean that you must necessarily dress like them; but be like them—act like them—talk like them, as Mr. Theriere did, you know. He was a gentleman.”
“An’ I’m not,” said Billy.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” the girl hastened to explain.
“Well, whether youse meant it or not, it’s so,” said the mucker. “I ain’t no gent—I’m a mucker. I have your word for it, you know—yeh said so that time on de Halfmoon, an’ I ain’t fergot it; but youse was right—I am a mucker. I ain’t never learned how to be anything else. I ain’t never wanted to be anything else until today. Now, I’d like to be a gent; but it’s too late.”
“Won’t you try?” asked the girl. “For my sake?”
“Go to’t,” returned the mucker cheerfully; “I’d even wear side whiskers fer youse.”
“Horrors!” exclaimed Barbara Harding. “I couldn’t look at you if you did.”
“Well, then, tell me wot youse do want me to do.”
Barbara discovered that her task was to be a difficult one if she were to accomplish it without wounding the man’s feelings; but she determined to strike while the iron was hot and risk offending him—why she should be interested in the regeneration of Mr. Billy Byrne it never once occurred to her to ask herself. She hesitated a moment before speaking.
“One of the first things you must do, Mr. Byrne,” she said, “is to learn to speak correctly. You mustn’t say ‘youse’ for ‘you,’ or ‘wot’ for ‘what’—you must try to talk as I talk. No one in the world speaks any language faultlessly, but there are certain more or less obvious irregularities of grammar and pronunciation that are particularly distasteful to people of refinement, and which are easy to guard against if one be careful.”
“All right,” said Billy Byrne, “youse—you kin pitch in an’ learn me wot—whatever you want to an’ I’ll do me best to talk like a dude—fer your sake.”
And so the mucker’s education commenced, and as there was little else for the two to do it progressed rapidly, for once started the man grew keenly interested, spurred on by the evident pleasure which his self-appointed tutor took in his progress—further it meant just so much more of close companionship with her.
For three weeks they never left the little island except to gather fruit which grew hard by on the adjacent mainland. Byrne’s wounds had troubled him considerably—at times he had been threatened with blood poisoning. His temperature had mounted once to alarming heights, and for a whole night Barbara Harding had sat beside him bathing his forehead and easing his sufferings as far as it lay within her power to do; but at last the wonderful vitality of the man had saved him. He was much weakened though and neither of them had thought it safe to attempt to seek the coast until he had fully regained his old-time strength.
So far but little had occurred to give them alarm. Twice they had seen natives on the mainland—evidently hunting parties; but no sign of pursuit had developed. Those whom they had seen had been pure-blood Malays—there had been no samurai among them; but their savage, warlike appearance had warned the two against revealing their presence.
They had subsisted upon fish and fruit principally since they had come to the island. Occasionally this diet had been relieved by messes of wild fowl and fox that Byrne had been successful in snaring with a primitive trap of his own invention; but lately the prey had become wary, and even the fish seemed less plentiful. After two days of fruit diet, Byrne announced his intention of undertaking a hunting trip upon the mainland.
“A mess of venison wouldn’t taste half bad,” he remarked.
“Yes,” cried the girl, “I’m nearly famished for meat—it seems as though I could almost eat it raw.”
“I know that I could,” stated Billy. “Lord help the deer that gets within range of this old gat of Theriere’s, and you may not get even a mouthful—I’m that hungry I’ll probably eat it all, hoof, hide, and horns, before ever I get any of it back here to you.”
“You’d better not,” laughed the girl. “Goodbye and good luck; but please don’t go very far—I shall be terribly lonely and frightened while you are away.”
“Maybe you’d better come along,” suggested Billy.
“No, I should be in the way—you can’t hunt deer with a gallery, and get any.”
“Well, I’ll stay within hailing distance, and you can look for me back any time between now and sundown. Goodbye,” and he picked his way down the bank into the river, while from behind a bush upon the mainland two wicked, black eyes watched his movements and those of the girl on the shore behind him while a long, sinewy, brown hand closed more tightly upon a heavy war spear, and steel muscles tensed for the savage spring and the swift throw.
The girl watched Billy Byrne forging his way through the swift rapids. What a mighty engine of strength and endurance he was! What a man! Yes, brute! And strange to relate Barbara Harding found herself admiring the very brutality that once had been repellent to her. She saw him leap lightly to the opposite bank, and then she saw a quick movement in a bush close at his side. She did not know what manner of thing had caused it, but her intuition warned her that behind that concealing screen lay mortal danger to the
