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 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. 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.
33
