“The Orang-Kaya hopes that we will stay with him some time and help to defend the village,” said Van der Kemp, when they were all seated.

“Of course you have agreed?” said Nigel.

“Yes; I came for that purpose.”

“We’s allers ready to fight in a good cause,” remarked Moses, just before filling his mouth with rice.

“Or to die in it!” added Verkimier, engulfing the breast of a chicken at a bite.  “But as zee pirates are not expected for some days, ve may as veil go after zee mias—­zat is what zee natifs call zee orang-utan.  It is a better word, being short.”

Moses glanced at the professor out of the corners of his black eyes and seemed greatly tickled by his enthusiastic devotion to business.

“I am also,” continued the professor, “extremely anxious to go at zee booterflies before—­”

“You die,” suggested Nigel, venturing on a pleasantry, whereat Moses opened his mouth in a soundless laugh, but, observing the professor’s goggles levelled at him, he transformed the laugh into an astounding sneeze, and immediately gazed with pouting innocence and interest at his plate.

“Do you alvays sneeze like zat?” asked Verkimier.

“Not allers,” answered the negro simply, “sometimes I gibs way a good deal wuss.  Depends on de inside ob my nose an’ de state ob de wedder.”

What the professor would have replied we cannot say, for just then a Dyak youth rushed in to say that an unusually large and gorgeous butterfly had been seen just outside the village!

No application of fire to gunpowder could have produced a more immediate effect.  The professor’s rice was scattered on the floor, and himself was outside the head-house before his comrades knew exactly what was the matter.

“He’s always like that,” said the hermit, with a slight twinkle in his eyes.  “Nothing discourages—­nothing subdues him.  Twice I pulled him out of deadly danger into which he had run in his eager pursuit of specimens.  And he has returned the favour to me, for he rescued me once when a mias had got me down and would certainly have killed me, for my gun was empty at the moment, and I had dropped my knife.”

“Is, then, the orang-utan so powerful and savage?”

“Truly, yes, when wounded and driven to bay,” returned the hermit.  “You must not judge of the creature by the baby that Verkimier has tamed.  A full-grown male is quite as large as a man, though very small in the legs in proportion, so that it does not stand high.  It is also very much stronger than the most powerful man.  You would be quite helpless in its grip, I assure you.”

“I hope, with the professor,” returned Nigel, “that we may have a hunt after them, either before or after the arrival of the pirates.  I know he is very anxious to secure a good specimen for some museum in which he is interested—­I forget which.”

As he spoke, the youth who had brought information about the butterfly returned and said a few words to Moses in his native tongue.