“It was you,” said I, “that saved me again.”

“That depends. You’ll find this island an infernally rum place, I promise you. I’d watch my goings carefully, if I were you. He ⁠—” He hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips. “I wish you’d help me with these rabbits,” he said.

His procedure with the rabbits was singular. I waded in with him, and helped him lug one of the hutches ashore. No sooner was that done than he opened the door of it, and tilting the thing on one end turned its living contents out on the ground. They fell in a struggling heap one on the top of the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they went off with that hopping run of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them I should think, up the beach.

“Increase and multiply, my friends,” said Montgomery. “Replenish the island. Hitherto we’ve had a certain lack of meat here.”