"
"Oh! You go now?" said Heyst, leaning back, his book on his knees.
"Yes. Me no likee. One man, two man, three man--no can do! Me go now."
"What's frightening you away like this?" asked Heyst, while through his
mind flashed the hope that something enlightening might come from that
being so unlike himself, taking contact with the world with a simplicity
and directness of which his own mind was not capable. "Why?" he went on.
"You are used to white men. You know them well."
"Yes. Me savee them," assented Wang inscrutably. "Me savee plenty."
All that he really knew was his own mind. He had made it up to withdraw
himself and the Alfuro woman from the uncertainties of the relations
which were going to establish themselves between those white men. It
was Pedro who had been the first cause of Wang's suspicion and fear. The
Chinaman had seen wild men. He had penetrated, in the train of a Chinese
pedlar, up one or two of the Bornean rivers into the country of the
Dyaks. He had also been in the interior of Mindanao, where there are
people who live in trees--savages, no better than animals; but a
hairy brute like Pedro, with his great fangs and ferocious growls, was
altogether beyond his conception of anything that could be looked upon
as human. The strong impression made on him by Pedro was the prime
inducement which had led Wang to purloin the revolver.
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