“Facts, Captain Hilton,” said the doctor, turning sharply upon the sun-tanned young officer, who, like the rest of the party, was attired in white, for the heat of the large, lightly-furnished room was very great, “facts, sir? What do you want? Haven’t you your Bible, and does it not tell you that Solomon’s ships went to Ophir, and brought back gold, and apes, and peacocks?”
“Yes,” said Captain Hilton, “certainly;” and the Reverend Arthur bowed his head.
“Oh, you’ll grant that,” said the little doctor, with a smile of triumph and a glance round the table.
“Of course,” said the young officer, taking a cigarette.
“I say, Doctor,” said the Resident – “or no; I’ll ask your brother-in-law. Mr Rosebury, did the doctor ventilate his astounding theory over in England?”
“No,” replied the chaplain, smiling, “I have never heard him propound any theory.”
“I thought not,” said the Resident. “Go on, doctor.”
“I don’t mind your banter,” said the little doctor, good-humouredly. “Now look here, Captain Hilton, I want to know what more you wish for. There’s Malacca due south of where you are sitting, and there lies Mount Ophir to the east.”
“But there is a Mount Ophir in Sumatra,” said Lieutenant Chumbley, the big, heavy dragoon-looking fellow, who had not yet spoken.
“In Sumatra?” cried the doctor. “Bah, sir, bah! That isn’t Solomon’s place at all. I tell you I’ve investigated the whole thing. Here’s Ophir east of Malacca, with its old gold workings all about the foot of the mountain; there are the apes in the trees – Boy, more ice.”
“And where are the peacocks?” drawled Chumbley.
“Hark at him!” cried the doctor; “he says where are the peacocks? Look here, Mr Chumbley, if you would take a gun, or a geologist’s hammer, and exercise your limbs and your understanding, instead of dangling about after young ladies – ”
“Shouldn’t have brought them out, doctor,” drawled the young fellow, coolly.
“Or say a collecting-box and a cyanide bottle,” continued the doctor, “instead of getting your liver into a torpid state by sitting and lying under trees and verandas smoking and learning to chew betel like the degraded natives, you would not ask me where are the peacocks?”
“I don’t know where they are, doctor,” said the young man, slowly.
“In the jungle, sir, in the jungle, which swarms with the lovely creatures, and with pheasants too. Pff! ’tis hot – Boy, more ice.”
“Don’t be so hard on a fellow, doctor,” drawled the lieutenant. “I’m new to the country, and I’ve twice as much body to carry about as you have. You’re seasoned and tough; I’m young and tender. So the jungle swarms with peacocks, does it?”
“Yes, sir, swarms,” said the doctor, with asperity. “Well,” said Chumbley, languidly, “let it swarm! I knew it swarmed with mosquitoes.”
“Sir,” said the doctor, contemptuously, as he glanced at the great frame of the young officer, “you never exert yourself, and I don’t believe, sir, that you know what is going on within a mile of the Residency.”
“I really don’t believe I do,” said the young man, with a sleepy yawn. “I say, Mr Perowne, can’t you give us a little more air?”
“My dear Mr Chumbley,” said the host, a thin, slightly grey, rather distingué man, “every door and window is wide open. Take a little more iced cup.”
“It makes a fellow wish he were a frog,” drawled the lieutenant. “I should like to go and lie right in the water with only my nose in the air.”
As he spoke he gazed sleepily through his half-closed eyes at the broad, moonlit river gliding on like so much molten silver, while on the farther bank the palms stood up in columns, spreading their great fronds like lace against the spangled purple sky.
Below them, playing amidst the bushes and undergrowth that fringed the river, it seemed as if nature had sent the surplus of her starry millions from sky to earth, for the leaves were dotted with fire-flies scintillating and flashing in every direction. A dense patch of darkness would suddenly blaze out with hundreds of soft, lambent sparks, then darken again for another patch to be illumined, as the wondrous insects played about like magnified productions of the points of light that run through well-burned tinder.
From time to time there would be a faint plash rise from the river, and the water rippled in the moonbeams, sounds then well understood by the occupants of Mr Perowne’s dining-room, for as the languid lieutenant made another allusion to the pleasure of being a frog, the doctor said, laughing: “Try it Chumbley; you are young and tolerably plump, and it would make a vacancy for another sub. The crocodiles would bless you.”
“Two natives were carried off last week while bathing on the bank,” said a sharp, harsh voice, and a little, thin, dry man who had been lying back in an easy-chair with a handkerchief over his head raised himself and passed his glass to be filled with claret and iced water. “Hah! Harley,” he continued, with a broad Scotch accent, “you ought to put down crocodiles. What’s the use of our having a Resident if he is not to suppress every nuisance in the place?”
“Put down crocodiles, Mr Stuart, eh? Rather a task!”
“Make these idle young officers shoot them then, instead of dangling after our daughters. Set Chumbley to work.”
“The crocodiles never hurt me,” drawled the young man. “Rather ugly, certainly, but they’ve a nice open style of countenance. I like hunting and shooting, but I don’t see any fun in making yourself a nuisance to everything that runs or flies, as the doctor there does, shooting, and skinning and sticking pins through ’em, and putting them in glass cases with camphor. I hope you don’t do much of that sort of thing, Mr Rosebury?”
“I? Oh, no,” said the Reverend Arthur, raising his eyes from a dreamy contemplation of the doorway, through which a pleasant murmur of female voices came. “I – I am afraid I am guilty as to insects.”
“But you draw the line at crocodiles, I suppose? Poor brutes! They never had any education, and if you put temptation in their way, of course they’ll tumble in.”
“And then repent and shed crocodile’s tears,” said Captain Hilton, smiling.
“A vulgar error, sir!” said the doctor, sharply. “Crocodiles have no tear-secreting glands.”
“They could not wipe their eyes in the water if they had, doctor,” said Captain Hilton, merrily.
“Of course not, sir,” said the doctor; “but as I was saying, gentlemen, when Solomon’s ships – ”
“I say, Perowne,” interrupted the little Scotch merchant, in his harsh voice, “hadn’t we better join the ladies? If Bolter is going to ventilate his theory I shall go to sleep.”
“I’ve done,” said the doctor, leaning back and thrusting his hands into his pockets; “but I must say, Stuart, that as an old resident in these parts I think you might give a little attention to a fact of great historical interest, and one that might lead to a valuable discovery of gold. What do you say, Perowne?”
“I leave such matters to you scientific gentlemen,” said the host, carefully flicking a scrap of cigar-ash from his shirt-front.
“You can’t tempt Perowne,” laughed the little Scot. “He is a regular Mount Ophir in himself, and,” he added to himself, “has a flaunting peacock – I mean peahen – of his own.”
“Nay, nay, Stuart,” said the host, smiling meaningly; “I am not a rich man.”
“Oh, no,” chuckled his brother merchant; “he’s as poor as a Jew.”
Mr Perowne shook his head at his harsh-voiced guest, glanced round suavely, as if asking permission of