a man of his years; but you see he would have it.  It’s the only way to deal with these tabooing chiefs.  You must face them and be done with it.  In the Caroline Islands, once, I had to do the same thing to a cazique who was going to cook and eat a very pretty young girl of his own retainers.  He wouldn’t listen to reason; the law was on his side; so, being happily not a law-abiding person myself, I took him up in my arms, and walked off with him bodily, and was obliged to drop him down into a very painful bed of stinging plants like nettles, so as to give myself time to escape with the girl clear out of his clutches.  I regretted having to do it so roughly, of course; but there was no other way out of it.”

As he spoke, for the first time it really came home to Frida’s mind that Bertram Ingledew, standing there before her, regarded in very truth the Polynesian chief and Sir Lionel Longden as much about the same sort of unreasoning people—­savages to be argued with and cajoled if possible; but if not, then to be treated with calm firmness and force, as an English officer on an exploring expedition might treat a wrathful Central African kinglet.  And in a dim sort of way, too, it began to strike her by degrees that the analogy was a true one, that Bertram Ingledew, among the Englishmen with whom she was accustomed to mix, was like a civilised being in the midst of barbarians, who feel and recognise but dimly and half-unconsciously his innate superiority.

By the time they had reached the gate on the other side of the hanger, Sir Lionel overtook them, boiling over with indignation.

“Your card, sir,” he gasped out inarticulately to the calmly innocent Alien; “you must answer for all this.  Your card, I say, instantly!”

Bertram looked at him with a fixed gaze.  Sir Lionel, having had good proof of his antagonist’s strength, kept his distance cautiously.

“Certainly not, my good friend,” Bertram replied, in a firm tone.  “Why should I, who am the injured and insulted party, assist you in identifying me?  It was you who aggressed upon my free individuality.  If you want to call in the aid of an unjust law to back up an unjust and irrational taboo, you must find out for yourself who I am, and where I come from.  But I wouldn’t advise you to do anything so foolish.  Three of us here saw you in the ridiculous position into which by your obstinacy you compelled me to put you; and you wouldn’t like to hear us recount it in public, with picturesque details, to your brother magistrates.  Let me say one thing more to you,” he added, after a pause, in that peculiarly soft and melodious voice of his.  “Don’t you think, on reflection—­ even if you’re foolish enough and illogical enough really to believe in the sacredness of the taboo by virtue of which you try to exclude your fellow-tribesmen from their fair share of enjoyment of the soil of England—­don’t you think you might at any rate exercise your imaginary