Once, goaded into fury by Leith's attempts to hurry the girls
when Holman was assisting them over a particularly rough stretch, I
turned upon the old scientist who was puffing along with the natives in
the lead.
The half-insane ancient heard my outburst to the end, staring at me
through the thick lenses of his glasses as if I was some new kind of a
bug whose appearance he wished to implant firmly within his mind.
"Science calls for sacrifices," he squeaked. "If my daughters are
heroines who wish to share my hardships in the pursuit of information
that will be of great benefit to the world, I fail to see what it has to
do with you, sir!"
"But they have no interest in your silly discoveries," I cried. "They
are doing this infernal tramp to look after you. Do you hear?"
"Confound you, sir!" he screamed. "Mind your own business and don't
interfere with mine!"
I choked down my wrath as Leith came crashing through from the rear, and
the old egoist, flushed and ruffled, dropped back to meet him, evidently
convinced of my insanity through my inability to appreciate his efforts
to prove that the skulls of long-dead Polynesians possessed peculiar
formations they were foreign to the islanders of the present day.
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