Sometimes a word came to the tip of his
tongue, felt the atmosphere, as you might say, then slid back into his
throat with a little protesting gurgle, and after a ten minutes'
conversation with him, those little gurgles from the strangled words
made me look upon him as a sort of morgue for murdered sentences.
Professor Herndon, the head of the expedition, was on the deck when the
captain and I came up out of the cabin, and Herndon was everything the
comic papers show in the make-up of science professors, with a little
bit extra for good luck. He was sixty inches of nerves, wrinkles, and
whiskers, with special adornments in the shape of a blue smoking cap,
and a pair of spectacles with specially ground lenses of an enormous
thickness.
Newmarch grunted something which the Professor and I took to be an
introduction, and he put a skinny hand into mine.
"You have been a long while in the Islands?" he squeaked.
"Longer than I care to say," I replied.
"Have you been around the spot we are making for?" he asked.
"I was on Penrhyn Island for three months," I answered.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29