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Two staring, dark-faced creatures, with restless fists and feet, they were alike in every least feature of their grotesque animality. Phebe placed a hand under the head of each, and looked at them for a long time in silence. "Why is this?" she said, at last, taking hold of a narrow pink ribbon, which was tied around the wrist of one. "He's the oldest, sure," the nurse answered.
At half-past ten that morning, a motor-car turned out from the garage at Clenarvon Court, and made its way down the avenue. In it was a single passenger the dark-faced Parisian valet of the Marquis de Sogrange. As the car left the avenue and struck into the main road, it was hailed by Peter Ruff and John Dory, who were walking together along the lane.
In the stern, on a little platform whence he could look over the heads of the others and catch any signal from the lookout, a squat, dark-faced steersman lounged against his crude rudder. Between these two the paddlers stood, each with one foot on the bottom of the long dugout and the other on the gunwale, swinging in nonchalant unison as their blades moved fore and aft.
Now the dark-faced king was never without a weapon near his hand; and holding his long spear, he would sit and listen to the young harper, now pleased, now angry, for he sometimes liked David and sometimes hated him. Twice he seized a little spear and flung it at him, crying out that he would pin him to the wall; but his aim was bad.
"If I were you I'd go a little slow about running a fellow down, just because he happens to be called Owen Dugdale, and live with a queer old gentleman he calls his grandfather, but who chooses to keep aloof from Scranton folks as if he were a hermit. I happen to know that two of our most respected chums, Hugh Morgan and Thad Stevens, seem to have taken a great liking for that dark-faced chap.
First came four people the white-bearded Charteris with Myra, and Grainger with Sheila; after them a sergeant and six white police, and ten Native Police with carbines on thighs, and then Dick Scott and dark-faced Inspector Lamington; behind followed a troop of spare horses.
A large, dark-faced native seemed to be their leader, and seeing the boys now ready to defend themselves, he shifted his gun to his left hand and held out his right with a smile, continuing his broken English. "Good mans me," he said. "You good mans. Plenty fliend, all light, all light, all light!"
And as the match suddenly flared up the dark-faced Spanish-American stared with astonishment into the countenance of the one who had come in answer to his frantic calls for assistance. "You, Senor Frank?" he exclaimed. "Sure," replied the rancher's son, as he bent over to examine the way in which the prisoner's foot had become caught.
This time, the visitor was a stranger to him, a dark-faced, clean-shaven man. He did not wear evening clothes, so could not be one of the guests; and Mr. McEachern could not place him immediately. Then, he remembered. He had seen him in Sir Thomas Blunt's dressing-room. This was Sir Thomas's valet. "Might I have a word with you, sir?" "What is it?" asked McEachern, staring heavily.
In the light of later developments it is known that the police responded, and with the assistance of boarding-house runners gathered in that day nearly all of this derelict crew, even to the cautious boatswain, who were promptly and severely punished for mutiny and desertion. But the later developments failed to show that the three dark-faced men were ever seen again.
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