"In that case," I said, "expect me back about the time your nose begins to run."
"Really?" And his whole face lighted up. "I'm delighted. Only six weeks. Why, then, if you'll stay round for only five or six weeks _more_ you'll be here for the wedding."
"I'll make it if I possibly can," I said. "I want to see if that girl's really true."
"Anything I can do to help you while you're gone? I've got loads of spare time----"
"I don't. But I'll blow back into the interior and look around. I've been meaning to right along, just for fun. But I can never get any of _them_ to go with me."
"Yes. Poor lot. They're committing race suicide as fast as they can. There are more wooden gods than people in Batengo village, and the superstition's so thick you could cut it with a knife. All the manly virtues have perished.... Aloiu!"
The boy who did Graves's chores for him came lazily out of the house.
"Aloiu," said Graves, "just run back into the island to the top of that hill--see?--that one over there--and fetch a handful of grass for this gentleman. He'll give you five dollars for it."
Aloiu grinned sheepishly and shook his head.
Aloiu shook his head with even more firmness, and I whistled. Fifty dollars would have made him the Rockefeller-Carnegie-Morgan of those parts.
"All right, coward," said Graves cheerfully. "Run away and play with the other children.... Now, isn't that curious? Neither love, money, nor insult will drag one of them a mile from the beach. They say that if you go 'back there in the grass' something awful will happen to you."
"The last man to try it," said Graves, "in the memory of the oldest inhabitant was a woman. When they found her she was all black and swollen--at least that's what they say. Something had bitten her just above the ankle."
"Nonsense," I said, "there are no snakes in the whole Batengo group."
"They didn't say it was a snake," said Graves. "They said the marks of the bite were like those that would be made by the teeth of a very little--child."
"What's the use of arguing with people that tell yarns like that! All the same, if you're bent on making expeditions back into the grass, you'll make 'em alone, unless the cable breaks and I'm free to make 'em with you."