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Updated: June 23, 2025
So saying, and Carefinotu and he carrying some provisions for lunch on the road, they set out, after taking leave of the professor, whose private opinion it was that they would find nothing, and that all their fatigue would be useless. Godfrey took his musket and revolver; the black the axe and the hunting-knife which had become his favourite weapon.
He was docile and willing, nevertheless; but like all his fellows, his shoulders did not set back, nor did his chest throw out, nor did his knees or his feet point apart! To make a Vestris or a Saint Leon of a savage of this sort! The professor pursued his task in quite a fury. Carefinotu, tortured as he was, showed no lack of zeal.
"Then," had Tartlet said, "if I cannot be his professor, I will be his pupil!" And he it was who attempted to learn the idiom spoken by Carefinotu. Godfrey had warned him that the accomplishment would be of little use. Tartlet was not dissuaded. He tried to get Carefinotu to name the objects he pointed at with his hand.
It was at the point of a strangely formed rock, a sort of truncated pyramid, easily recognizable. Showing this to his companion, he kept straight on. The quarter of a mile was soon traversed, then the last line was climbed, and Godfrey and Carefinotu gained the beach about fifty paces from the rock. They ran up to it. Nobody!
From the first, a bed had been reserved for Carefinotu in the room at Will Tree, but generally, unless it was raining, he preferred to sleep outside in some hole in the tree, as though he were on guard over the house. During the fortnight which followed his arrival on the island, Carefinotu many times accompanied Godfrey on his shooting excursions.
Carefinotu speaking English like a cockney, calling him by his name, announcing the early arrival of Uncle Will, and then the sudden report of the fire-arms? He asked himself if he had gone mad; but he had no time for insoluble questions, for below him hardly five minutes after the first sound of the guns a body of sailors appeared hurrying through the trees.
The domestic flock were taken as in a trap and delivered over to the clutches of the assailants. Godfrey and Carefinotu, who had climbed up to the two small windows in the bark of the sequoia, endeavoured to see what was passing in the gloom. Evidently the wild animals tigers or lions, panthers or hyænas, they did not know which yet had thrown themselves on the flock and begun their slaughter.
Carefinotu did not at first understand what was meant, and imitating the gesture of Godfrey he also turned and ran his eyes over the space. "Arneka," said he at length. "Arneka?" replied Godfrey, striking the soil with his foot so as to accentuate his demand. "Arneka!" repeated the negro.
Carefinotu pushed him aside at the same instant as a serpent glided beneath the herbage, and was about to strike at him. "Snakes, now. Snakes in the island, after the bears and the tigers!" he exclaimed. Yes! It was one of those reptiles well-known by the noise they make, a rattlesnake of the most venomous species: a giant of the Crotalus family!
Notwithstanding the remonstrances made to him, Carefinotu persisted in watching outside during the night, and Godfrey hoped thus to receive warning of a direct attack.
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