And then Crusoe, who had been waiting quietly behind me in the
path, slipped in between us. Every hair on his neck was bristling.
The lifted upper lip snarled unmistakably. He gave me a swift
glance which said, _Shall I spring_?

Quite suddenly the gorilla blandishments of Captain Magnus came to
an end.

"Say," he said harshly, "hold back that dog, will you? I don't
want to kill the cur."

"You had better not," I returned coldly. "I should have to explain
how it happened, you know. As it is I shall say nothing. But I
shall not forget my revolver again when I go to walk."

And Crusoe and I went swiftly down the path which the captain no
longer disputed.




IX

"LASSIE, LASSIE. . ."

Two or three days later occurred a painful episode. The small
unsuspected germ of it had lain ambushed in a discourse of Mr.
Shaw's, delivered shortly after our arrival on the island, on the
multifarious uses of the cocoa-palm. He told how the juice from
the unexpanded flower-spathes is drawn off to form a potent toddy,