But the islanders, seeing that I was really adrift, took pity on me. I
drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly;
and presently I saw, with hysterical relief, the launch come round and
return towards me. She was heavily laden, and I could make out as she
drew nearer Montgomery’s white-haired, broad-shouldered companion
sitting cramped up with the dogs and several packing-cases in the stern
sheets. This individual stared fixedly at me without moving or
speaking. The black-faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the
bows near the puma. There were three other men besides,—three strange
brutish-looking fellows, at whom the staghounds were snarling savagely.
Montgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me, and rising,
caught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me, for there was
no room aboard.

I had recovered from my hysterical phase by this time and answered his
hail, as he approached, bravely enough. I told him the dingey was
nearly swamped, and he reached me a piggin. I was jerked back as the
rope tightened between the boats. For some time I was busy baling.

It was not until I had got the water under (for the water in the dingey
had been shipped; the boat was perfectly sound) that I had leisure to
look at the people in the launch again.

The white-haired man I found was still regarding me steadfastly, but
with an expression, as I now fancied, of some perplexity. When my eyes
met his, he looked down at the staghound that sat between his knees. He
was a powerfully-built man, as I have said, with a fine forehead and
rather heavy features; but his eyes had that odd drooping of the skin
above the lids which often comes with advancing years, and the fall of
his heavy mouth at the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious
resolution. He talked to Montgomery in a tone too low for me to hear.

From him my eyes travelled to his three men; and a strange crew they
were. I saw only their faces, yet there was something in their faces—I
knew not what—that gave me a queer spasm of disgust. I looked steadily
at them, and the impression did not pass, though I failed to see what
had occasioned it. They seemed to me then to be brown men; but their
limbs were oddly swathed in some thin, dirty, white stuff down even to
the fingers and feet: I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and
women so only in the East. They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered
out their elfin faces at me,—faces with protruding lower-jaws and
bright eyes. They had lank black hair, almost like horsehair, and
seemed as they sat to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen.
The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a
head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that really none
were taller than myself; but their bodies were abnormally long, and the
thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted. At any rate, they
were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the heads of them under the
forward lug peered the black face of the man whose eyes were luminous
in the dark. As I stared at them, they met my gaze; and then first one
and then another turned away from my direct stare, and looked at me in
an odd, furtive manner. It occurred to me that I was perhaps annoying
them, and I turned my attention to the island we were approaching.

It was low, and covered with thick vegetation,—chiefly a kind of palm,
that was new to me. From one point a thin white thread of vapour rose
slantingly to an immense height, and then frayed out like a down
feather. We were now within the embrace of a broad bay flanked on
either hand by a low promontory. The beach was of dull-grey sand, and
sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty or seventy feet above the
sea-level, and irregularly set with trees and undergrowth. Half way up
was a square enclosure of some greyish stone, which I found
subsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceous lava.
Two thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure. A man stood
awaiting us at the water’s edge. I fancied while we were still far off
that I saw some other and very grotesque-looking creatures scuttle into
the bushes upon the slope; but I saw nothing of these as we drew
nearer. This man was of a moderate size, and with a black negroid face.
He had a large, almost lipless, mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long
thin feet, and bow-legs, and stood with his heavy face thrust forward
staring at us. He was dressed like Montgomery and his white-haired
companion, in jacket and trousers of blue serge. As we came still
nearer, this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making
the most grotesque movements.

At a word of command from Montgomery, the four men in the launch sprang
up, and with singularly awkward gestures struck the lugs. Montgomery
steered us round and into a narrow little dock excavated in the beach.
Then the man on the beach hastened towards us. This dock, as I call it,
was really a mere ditch just long enough at this phase of the tide to
take the longboat. I heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the
dingey off the rudder of the big boat with my piggin, and freeing the
painter, landed. The three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements,
scrambled out upon the sand, and forthwith set to landing the cargo,
assisted by the man on the beach. I was struck especially by the
curious movements of the legs of the three swathed and bandaged
boatmen,—not stiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as
if they were jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling,
and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired man
landed with them. The three big fellows spoke to one another in odd
guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach began
chattering to them excitedly—a foreign language, as I fancied—as they
laid hands on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard
such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man
stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling orders over their
din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed likewise, and all
set to work at unloading. I was too faint, what with my long fast and
the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer any assistance.

Presently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence, and
came up to me.

“You look,” said he, “as though you had scarcely breakfasted.” His
little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows. “I must
apologise for that. Now you are our guest, we must make you
comfortable,—though you are uninvited, you know.” He looked keenly into
my face. “Montgomery says you are an educated man, Mr. Prendick; says
you know something of science. May I ask what that signifies?”

I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science, and
had done some researches in biology under Huxley. He raised his
eyebrows slightly at that.

“That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick,” he said, with a trifle
more respect in his manner. “As it happens, we are biologists here.
This is a biological station—of a sort.” His eye rested on the men in
white who were busily hauling the puma, on rollers, towards the walled
yard. “I and Montgomery, at least,” he added. Then, “When you will be
able to get away, I can’t say. We’re off the track to anywhere. We see
a ship once in a twelve-month or so.”

He left me abruptly, and went up the beach past this group, and I think
entered the enclosure. The other two men were with Montgomery, erecting
a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck. The llama was still
on the launch with the rabbit hutches; the staghounds were still lashed
to the thwarts. The pile of things completed, all three men laid hold
of the truck and began shoving the ton-weight or so upon it after the
puma. Presently Montgomery left them, and coming back to me held out
his hand.

“I’m glad,” said he, “for my own part. That captain was a silly ass.
He’d have made things lively for you.”

“It was you,” said I, “that saved me again.”

“That depends. You’ll find this island an infernally rum place, I
promise you. I’d watch my goings carefully, if I were you. \emph{He}—” He
hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips. “I
wish you’d help me with these rabbits,” he said.

His procedure with the rabbits was singular. I waded in with him, and
helped him lug one of the hutches ashore. No sooner was that done than
he opened the door of it, and tilting the thing on one end turned its
living contents out on the ground. They fell in a struggling heap one
on the top of the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they went
off with that hopping run of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them I should
think, up the beach.

“Increase and multiply, my friends,” said Montgomery. “Replenish the
island. Hitherto we’ve had a certain lack of meat here.”

As I watched them disappearing, the white-haired man returned with a
brandy-flask and some biscuits. “Something to go on with, Prendick,”
said he, in a far more familiar tone than before. I made no ado, but
set to work on the biscuits at once, while the white-haired man helped
Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits. Three big
hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma. The brandy I did
not touch, for I have been an abstainer from my birth.