The nondescript replied by starting to his feet, throwing up both arms and giving vent to an absolute roar of joy.
"He seems to know you," remarked Nigel, as they made for a landing-place.
"Yes.

He is the friend I have come to rescue," replied the hermit in a tone of quiet satisfaction.

"He is a naturalist and lives with the Rajah against whom the pirates are plotting." "He don't look z'if he needs much rescuin'," remarked Moses with a chuckle, as they drew to land.
The man looked in truth as if he were well able to take care of himself in most circumstances, being of colossal bulk although somewhat short of limb.
"Ah! mein frond! mine brodder!" he exclaimed, in fairly idiomatic English, but with a broken pronunciation that was a mixture of Dutch, American, and Malay.

His language therefore, like himself, was nondescript.

In fact he was an American-born Dutchman, who had been transported early in life to the Straits Settlements, had received most of his education in Hongkong, was an old school-fellow of Van der Kemp, became an enthusiastic naturalist, and, being possessed of independent means, spent most of his time in wandering about the various islands of the archipelago, making extensive collections of animal and vegetable specimens, which he distributed with liberal hand to whatever museums at home or abroad seemed most to need or desire them.