Besides, I had my wonderful young friend, to whom I grew daily more attached.  He and I, of course, were of the same mind on the subject of duck, and, as often as possible, would give Charlie the slip and explore the ins and outs of the mangrove islands—­merely for beauty’s sake, or in study of the queer forms of life dimly and uncouthly climbing the ladder of being in those strange solitudes.  In these comradely hours together, I found myself feeling drawn to him as I can imagine a young father is drawn to a young son; and sometimes I seemed to see in his eyes the suggestion of a confidence he was on the edge of making me—­a whimsical, pondering expression, as though wondering whether he dare to tell me or not.

“What is it, Jack?” I asked him for once when, early in our acquaintance, we had asked him what we were to call him, he had answered with a laugh:  “O! call me Jack—­Jack Harkaway.”  We had laughed, reminding him of the schoolboy hero of that name and he had answered:  “Never mind.  One name is as good as another.  That is my name when I go on adventures.  Tell me your adventure names.  I don’t want your prosaic every-day names.”  “Well,” I had replied, entering into the lad’s humour, “my friend here is Sir Francis Drake, and I, well—­I’m Sir Henry Morgan.”

“What is it, Jack?” I repeated.

But he shook his head.

“No!” he replied, “I like you ever so much—­and I wish I could; but I mustn’t.”

“Somebody else’s secret again?” I ventured.

“Yes!” And he added:  “This time it’s mine too.  But—­some day perhaps; who knows?—­” He broke off in boyish confusion.

“All right, dear Jack,” I said, patting his shoulder, “take your own time.  We’re friends anyway.”

“That we are,” responded the lad, with a fine glow.

We left it so at the moment, and had ourselves poled in the direction of Charlie’s voice, which was breaking mirror after mirror of exquisite lagoon-like silence with demands for our return to camp.  He evidently had shot all the duck he wanted, for that day, and was beginning to be hungry for dinner.

Yet, I mustn’t be too hard on Charlie, for, as we know, even Charlie had another object in his trip besides duck.  As a certain poet brutally puts it, he had anticipated also “the hunting of man.”  In addition, though it is against the law of those Britannic islands, he had promised me a flamingo or two for decorative purposes.  However, flamingoes and Tobias alike kept out of gunshot, and, as the week grew toward its end, Charlie began to grow a little restive.

“It looks,” he murmured one evening, as we had completed our fourteenth meal of roast duck, and were musing over our after-duck cigars, “it looks as if I am not going to have any use for this.”