The Savage Gentleman by Philip Wylie Read Free Book Online Page A

would have chilled a gorilla.

    McCobb paused long enough to call, "Don't worry, Stone. The boy will be all right." But Stone had already plunged out of sight on the trail to the zebus.

    McCobb trotted toward the brook with an anxious face. Stone ran headlong to the corral and found nothing. It was Jack who located the child and set up a wild hallooing.
    They converged on the beach. Jack was wreathed in smiles.

    "He was sitting here on the sand fishing." Jack held up a pole which had been pulled from a bush and to which was tied a long vine. There was neither hook nor bait. I Henry fidgeted.

    His father sat down weakly. "You know you should never go out without someone, son."

    "How old do I have to be before I can go alone?"

    "Fourteen."

    "Couldn't I go a little way when I'm seven?"

    "No."

    McCobb caught his lost breath. "Did you think you'd be able to catch anything with that, Henry?"

    The child looked at his tackle.

    "Nothing very big," he confessed, "but I thought maybe a little teeny, teeny fish would bite the end and I could pull it out before it could let go."

    Jack exploded into laughter. Stone postponed his lecture on taking illicit advantage of open gates.

    They returned to the house.

    Sometimes, at night, McCobb and Stone would talk. Often they would sit for long hours in silence--for they had covered long ago most of the subjects which they thought would be of mutual interest. Occasionally, now, their discussions would be of the world and what was taking place there.

    "We left at an interesting time," McCobb would say, and Stone would not need to wonder if there were faint and unprotesting regret in his voice. "That fellow Edison was starting things to hum. I don't think the possibilities of electricity were ended with the invention of incandescent lights and power, and whatnot, either.

    "Then--there's flying."

    "Fiddle-faddle," said Stone, remembering an editorial he had written on the subject.

    "Well--you can't overlook balloons."

    "I can overlook balloons," Stone would reply. "And I do overlook balloons."
    Something of his drawing-room manner would return to him. "Let's straighten out the problems of travel on the ground, I say, before we start spinning cobwebs in the sky. I trust I am progressive--but I also trust a thousand years of civilization are realized before man takes wings."

    "I'd like to have a look at the bay on the southeast corner of the island."

    McCobb always submerged his wonderings about the world they had left with a little forage on his own in the local bush.

    "Go ahead. Take the boat."

    He would take the boat--if the weather promised to hold--and in some seasons it was absolutely steady--and sail out of the harbor and along the coast.

    Then a new McCobb would come into being. He would be master of himself, sailing his own small ship, in his own world, on his own business. He'd smoke and steer and stare.

    He had, thus, found the crocodile-ridden swamp at the head of the lake. He had discovered the unnamed birds which were taller than ostriches and laid eggs a foot long and which had extremely violent dispositions.

    One day he returned from an absence of forty-eight hours with a cloth bag which he took to the "shed." He spent some time there and talked to Stone about it that night, after they had shared a bottle of wine to celebrate his home-coming.

    "I have a little surprise for you," McCobb said.

    "New bird? Because if that's it--I had enough of birds the first time I saw those filthy creatures."

    "No."

    McCobb fished in his pocket and poured a handful of shining metal on the table.

    Stone stared at it. "Is it?" he asked finally.

    McCobb nodded. "Gold. Pure gold. I found it in those hills north of the lake. In rotten quartz. There's enough on the surface to sink a ship."

    Henry bent over the treasure. "Can I have some?"

    " May I have some," his father suggested.

    "May I?"

    "You may have it all, Henry. It's no good to me."

    "Unless," Stone suggested, "you