What a fool he had been to disregard Schumer's advice; the wise Schumer, who foresaw everything, had even seen his--Floyd's--stupidity.
Well, there was no use in complaining; the thing now was to make preparation for whatever might happen. The house door was strong and the walls, without being loopholed, had convenient spaces--"ventilation holes" Schumer had called them--through which a rifle might be fired.
He rose up and, going to the house, lit the lamp and began to overhaul the arms and ammunition. This done, he retired to bed with a loaded rifle by his side.
When he came to the fishing ground next morning, he kept a keen lookout for any alteration in Sru.
Sru, however, seemed just the same, and the hands were working as usual. Timau, wholly recovered now, was working with them, but there was no sign of Isbel.
He asked Sru where she was, and Sru cast his yellow-whited eyes about as if in search of her. He opined she might be somewhere in the grove that lay to the right of the camping place, and indicated the place with his hand. But as Sru spoke with seeming indifference, Floyd noticed an expansion of his nostrils and a new light in his eye. It was as though something had suddenly irritated him.
Floyd thought little of the matter. He knew Isbel's ways, and could easily imagine that her strange nature might give cause for friction between herself and her own people. He set to work and put the thought of her out of his mind--or fancied that he had done so.
As a matter of fact, she was never quite absent from his mind, and he had reached the stage now of anger with the Kanakas that she should be of their blood and living among them as one of them.
The strange psychological fact presented itself that though Isbel was a Kanaka, he was beginning to feel toward Kanakas some of that contempt, amounting to dislike, so evident in Schumer. That she who was so different to these people around him should be of the same blood was, so to speak, an insult against her.
Sru's savagery and scars, Timau's ugliness--for Timau was a most unbeautiful type, though, withal, having a certain honestness in his plainness, the monkey tricks of the others, and their general childishness and fatuity, all these things were a reflection on Isbel.