it, when he was brought to a stand by a peculiar cry that might have been the bleat of a young lamb: “Ba–ba!”
“What’s that!” he croaked.
He stood listening, and in a moment he again heard the cry, this time more distinctly: “Blak!–Blak!”
There could be no mistake. It was Winthrope calling for him, and calling with a clearness of voice that would have been physically impossible half an hour since. Blake’s sunken eyes lighted with hope. He burst through the last screen of jungle, and stared towards the palm under which he had left his companions. They were not there.
Another call from Winthrope directed his gaze more seaward. The two were seated beside a fallen palm, and Miss Leslie had a large round object raised to her lips. Winthrope was waving to him.
“Cocoanuts!” he yelled. “Come on!”
Three of the palms had been overthrown by the hurricane, and when Blake came up, he found the ground strewn with nuts. He seized the first he came to; but Winthrope held out one already opened. He snatched it from him, and placed the hole to his swollen lips. Never had champagne tasted half so delicious as that cocoanut milk. Before he could drain the last of it through the little opening, Winthrope had the husks torn from the ends of two other nuts, and the convenient germinal spots gouged open with his penknife.
Blake emptied the third before he spoke. Even then his voice was hoarse and strained. “How’d you strike ’em?”
“I couldn’t help it,” explained Winthrope. “Hardly had you disappeared when I noticed the tops of the fallen palms, and thought of the nuts. There was one in the grass not twenty feet from where we lay.”
“Lucky for you–and for me, too, I guess,” said Blake. “We were all three down for the count. But this settles the first round in our favor. How do you like the picnic, Miss Jenny?”
“Miss Leslie, if you please,” replied the girl, with hauteur.
“Oh, say, Miss Jenny!” protested Blake, genially. “We live in the same boarding-house now. Why not be folksy? You’re free to call me Tom. Pass me another nut, Winthrope. Thanks! By the way, what’s your front name? Saw it aboard ship–Cyril–”
“Cecil,” corrected Winthrope, in a low tone.
“Cecil–Lord Cecil, eh?–or is it only The Honorable Cecil?”
“My dear sir, I have intimated before that, for reasons of–er–State–”
“Oh, yes; you’re travelling incog., in the secret service. Sort of detective–”
“Detective!” echoed Winthrope, in a peculiar tone.
Blake grinned. “Well, it is rawther a nawsty business for your honorable ludship. But there’s nothing like calling things by their right names.”
“Right names–er–I don’t quite take you. I have told you distinctly, my name is Cecil Winthrope!”
“O-h-h! how lovely!–See-sill! See-seal!–Bet they called you Sissy at school. English, chum of mine told me your schools are corkers for nicknames. What’ll we make it–Sis or Sissy?”
“I prefer my patronymic, Mr. Blake,” replied Winthrope.
“All right, then; we’ll make it Pat, if that’s your choice. I say, Pat, this juice is the stuff for wetness, but it makes a fellow remember his grub. Where’d you leave that fish?”
“Really, I can’t just say, but it must have been where I wrenched my ankle.”
“You cawn’t just say! And what are we going to eat?”
“Here are the cocoanuts.”
“Bright boy! go to the head of the class! Just take some more husk off those empty ones.”
Winthrope caught up one of the nuts, and with the aid of his knife, stripped it of its husk. At a gesture from Blake, he laid it on the bare ground, and the American burst it open with a blow of his heel. It was an immature nut, and the meat proved to be little thicker than clotted cream. Blake divided it into three parts, handing Miss Leslie the cleanest.
Though his companions began with more restraint, they finished their shares with equal gusto. Winthrope needed no further orders to return to his husking. One after another, the nuts were cracked and divided among the three, until even Blake could not swallow another mouthful of the luscious cream.
Toward the end Miss Leslie had become drowsy. At Winthrope’s urging, she now lay down for a nap, Blake’s coat serving as a pillow. She fell asleep while Winthrope was yet arranging it for her. Blake had turned his back on her, and was staring moodily at the hippopotamus trail, when Winthrope hobbled around and sat down on the palm trunk beside him.
“I say, Blake,” he suggested, “I feel deuced fagged myself. Why not all take a nap?”
“‘And when they awoke, they were all dead men,’” remarked Blake.
“By Jove, that sounds like a joke,” protested the Englishman. “Don’t rag me now.”
“Joke!” repeated Blake. “Why, that’s Scripture, Pat, Scripture! Anyway, you’d think it no joke to wake up and find yourself going down the throat of a hippo.”
“Hippo?”
“Dozens of them over in the river. Shouldn’t wonder if they’ve all landed, and ’re tracking me down by this time.”
“But hippopotami are not carnivorous–they’re not at all dangerous, unless one wounds them, out in the water.”
“That may be; but I’m not taking chances. They’ve got mouths like sperm whales–I saw one take a yawn. Another thing, that bayou is chuck full of alligators, and a fellow down on the Rand told me they’re like the Central American gavials for keenness to nip a swimmer.”
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