He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversy with some one who seemed to me to talk gibberish in response to him. The matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought my ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at the dogs and returned to the cabin.
"Well?" said he, in the doorway. "You were just beginning to tell me."
I told him my name, Edward Prendick, and how I had taken to natural history as a relief from the dulness of my comfortable independence. He seemed interested in this. "I've done some science myself—I did my Biology at University College,—getting out the ovary of the earthworm and the radula of the snail and all that. Lord! it's ten years ago. But go on, go on—tell me about the boat."
He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story, which I told in concise sentences enough,—for I felt horribly weak,—and when it was finished he reverted presently to the topic of natural history and his own biological studies. He began to question me closely about Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street. "Is Caplatzi still flourishing? What a shop that was!" He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student, and drifted incontinently to the topic of the music-halls. He told me some anecdotes. "Left it all," he said, "ten years ago. How jolly it used to be! But I made a young ass of myself.… Played myself out before I was twenty-one. I dare say it's all different now.… But I must look up that ass of a cook and see what he's doing to your mutton."
9
