A NIGHT OF HORROR.
The gale broke on the morning of Thursday, November 2. The compacted heaven of cloud scattered in swelling cream-coloured masses; the sun shone out of the wide lakes of moist blue, and the sea turned from the cold and sickly gray of the stormy hours into a rich sapphire, with a high swell and a plentiful chasing of foaming billows. By four o'clock in the afternoon the ocean had smoothed down into a tropical expanse of quietly rising and falling waters, with the hot sun sliding westwards and the barque stemming the sea afresh under all cloths which could be piled upon her, the wind a small breeze, about west, and the sea-line a flawless girdle.
The evening that followed was one of quiet beauty. There was a young moon overhead, with power enough to drop a little trickling of silver into the dark sea under her; the clouds had vanished, and the stars shone brightly with a very abundant showering of meteoric lights above the trucks of the silent swaying masts.
As we paced the deck the Captain joined us. Short of going to our respective cabins, there was no means of getting rid of him; so we continued to patrol the planks, with him at Helga's side, talking, talking—oh, Heaven! how he talked! His manner was distressingly caressing. Helga kept hold of my arm, and meanwhile I, true to that posture I had maintained for the past three days, listened or sent my thoughts elsewhere, rarely speaking. In the course of his ceaseless chatter he struck upon the subject of his crew and their victuals, and told us he was sorry that we were not present when Nakier and two other coloured men came aft into the cuddy after he had taken sights and gone below.
'I am certain,' he exclaimed, smiting his leg, 'that I have made them reflective! I believe I could not mistake. Nakier in particular listened with attention, and looked at his mates with an expression as though conviction were being slowly borne in upon him.'
I pricked up my ears at this, for here was a matter that had been causing me some anxious thought, and I broke away from my sullen, resentful behaviour to question him.
'What brought the men aft?'
'The same tiresome story,' he answered, speaking loudly, and seemingly forgetful of or indifferent to the pair of yellow ears which, I might warrant him, were thirstily listening at the helm. 'They ask for beef, for beef, for nothing but beef, and I say yes—beef one day, pork another; beef for your bodies and pork for your souls. I shall conquer them; and what a triumph it will be! Though I should make no further progress with them, yet I could never feel too grateful for a decisive victory over a gross imbecile superstition that, like a shutter, though it be one of many, helps to keep out the light.'
He then went on to tell us what he had said, how he had reasoned, and I shall not soon forget the unctuous, self-satisfied chuckle which broke from the folds of his throat as he paused before asking Helga what she thought of that as an example of pure logic. I listened, wondering that a man who could talk as he did could be crazy enough to attempt so perilous an experiment as the attempting to win his crew over to his own views of religion by as dangerous an insult as his fanatical mind could have lighted upon. It was the more incomprehensible to me in that the fellow had started upon his crude missionary scheme when there were but two whites in the ship to eleven believers in the Prophet.
I waited until his having to fetch breath enabled me to put in a word. I then briefly and quietly related what had passed in the forecastle as described to me by Jacob Minnikin.
'And what then, Mr. Tregarthen?' said he, and I seemed to catch a sneer threading, so to speak, his bland utterance: the moon gave but little light, as I have said, and I could not see his face. 'When a man starts on the work of converting, he must not be afraid.'
'Your men have knives—they are devils, so I have heard, when aroused—you may not be afraid, but you have no right to provoke peril for us,' I said.
'The coxswain of a lifeboat should have a stout heart,' he exclaimed. 'Miss Nielsen, do not be alarmed by your courageous friend's apprehension. My duty is exceedingly simple. I must do what is right. Right is divinely protected;' and I saw by the pose of his head that he cast his eyes up at the sky.
I nudged Helga as a hint not to speak, just breathlessly whispering, 'He is not to be reasoned with.'
It was a little before ten o'clock that night when the girl retired to her cabin. The Captain, addressing her in a simpering, loverlike voice, had importuned her to change her cabin. She needed to grow fretful before her determined refusals silenced him. He entered his berth when she had gone, and I took my pipe to enjoy a quiet smoke on deck. After the uproar of the past three days, the serenity of the night was exquisitely soothing. The moon shone in a curl of silver; the canvas soared in pallid visible spaces starwards; there was a pleasant rippling sound of gently stirred waters alongside, and the soft westerly night-wind fanned the cheek with the warmth of an infant's breath. The decks ran darkling forwards; the shadow of the courses flung a dye that was deeper than the gloom of the hour betwixt the rails, and nothing stirred save the low-lying stars which slipped up and down past the forecastle rail under the crescent of the foresail as the barque curtseyed.
Nevertheless, though I could not see the men, I heard a delicate sound of voices proceeding from the block of darkness where the forecastle front lay. Mr. Jones had charge of the watch, and, on my stepping aft to the wheel, I found Jacob grasping the spokes, having relieved the helm at four bells—ten o'clock. He was not to be accosted while on that duty; and my dislike of the mate had not been lessened by the few words which had passed between us since the day when the Cape steamer had gone by, and by my observation of his fawning behaviour to the Captain. I briefly exclaimed that it was a fine night, received some careless, drowsy answer from him, and, with pipe betwixt my lips, lounged lonely on the lee side of the deck, often overhanging the rail, and viewing the sea-glow as it crept by, with my mind full of Helga, of my home, of our experiences so far, and of what might lie before us.
I was startled out of a fit of musing by the forecastle bell ringing five. The clear, keen chimes floated like an echo from the sea, and I caught a faint reverberation of them in the hollow canvas. It was half-past ten. I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, and, going on to the quarter-deck, dropped through the hatch.
The lantern swinging in the corridor betwixt the berths was burning. I lightly called to Helga to know if all was well with her, but she was silent, and, as I might suppose, asleep. I put out the light, as my custom now was, and, partially unclothing myself in the dark, got into my bunk and lay for a little watching the dance of a phantom star or two in the dim black round of the scuttle close against my head, sleepily wondering how long this sort of life was to continue, what time was to pass, and how much was to happen before I should be restored to the comfort of my own snug bedroom at home; and thus musing, too drowsy perhaps for melancholy, I fell asleep.
I was awakened by someone beating heavily upon the bulkhead of the next-door cabin.
'Mr. Tregarthen! Mr. Tregarthen!' roared a voice; then thump! thump! went the blows of a massive fist or handspike. 'For Gor' a'mighty's sake wake up and turn out!—there's murder a-doing! Which is your cabin?'
I recognised the voice of Abraham, disguised as it was by horror and by the panting of his breath.
The exclamation, There's murder a-doing! collected my wits in a flash, and I was wide awake and conscious of the man's meaning ere he had fairly delivered himself of his cry.
'I am here—I will be with you!' I shouted, and, without pausing further to attire myself, dropped from my bunk and made with outstretched hands for the door, which I felt for and opened.
It was pitch dark in this passage betwixt the cabins, without even the dim gleam the porthole in the berth offered to the eye to rest on.
'Where are you, Abraham?' I cried.
'Here, sir!' he exclaimed, almost in my ear, and, lifting my hand, I touched him.
'The crew's up!' he cried. 'They've killed the mate, and by this time, I allow, the Capt'n's done for.'
'Where's Jacob?'
'Gor' He only knows, sir!'
'Are you armed? Do you grip anything?'
'Nothen, nothen. I run without stopping to arm myself. I'll tell ye about it—but it's awful to be a-talking in this here blackness with murder happening close by.'
He still panted as from heavy recent exertion, and his voice faltered as though he were sinking from a wound.
'What is it?' cried the clear voice of Helga from her berth.
'Open your door!' I said, knowing that it was her practice to shoot the bolt. 'All is darkness here. Let us in—dress yourself by feeling for your clothes—the Malays have risen upon the Captain and mate—it may be our turn next, and we must make a stand in your cabin. Hush!'
In the interval of her quitting her bunk to open the door, I strained my ears. Nothing was to be heard save near and distant noises rising out of the vessel as she heeled on the long westerly swell. But then we were deep down, with two decks for any noise made on the poop to penetrate.
'The door is open,' said Helga.
I had one hand on Abraham's arm, and, feeling with the other, I guided him into Helga's berth, the position of which, as he had never before been in this part of the vessel, he could not have guessed. I then closed the door and bolted it.
'Dress yourself quickly, Helga!' said I, talking to her in the mine-like blindness of this interior that was untouched by the star or two that danced in her cabin window as in mine.
'Tell me what has happened!' she exclaimed.
'Speak, Abraham!' said I.
'Lor'! but Oi don't seem able to talk without a light,' he answered. 'Ain't there no lantern here? If there's a lantern, I've got three or four loocifers in my pocket.'
'Hist!' I cried. 'I hear footsteps.'
We held our breath: all was still. Some sound had fallen upon my ear. It resembled the slapping of planks with naked feet to my fancy, that had been terrified by Abraham's sudden horrible report, before there was time for my muscles and nerves to harden into full waking strength.
'What d'ye hear?' hoarsely whispered Abraham.
'It was imagination. Helga, can we light the lantern?'
She answered 'Yes'—she was ready.
'Strike a match, Abraham, that I may see where the lantern hangs!' said I.
He did so, holding the flame in his fist. I opened the door, whipped out, took down the lantern and darted in again, bolting the door anew with a thrill of fear following upon the haste I had made through imagination of one of those yellow-skins crouching outside with naked knife in hand. I swiftly lighted the lantern, and placed it in Helga's bunk. Abraham was of an ashen paleness, and I knew my own cheeks to be bloodless.
'Ought we to fear the crew?' cried Helga. 'We have not wronged them. They will not want our lives.'
'Dorn't trust 'em, dorn't trust 'em!' exclaimed Abraham. 'Ain't there nothen here to sarve as weapons?' he added, rolling his eyes around the cabin.
'What is the story? Tell it now, man, tell it!' I cried, in a voice vehement with nerves.
He answered, speaking low, very hastily and hoarsely: 'Oi'd gone below at eight bells. Oi found Nakier haranguing some of the men as was in the fok'sle; but he broke off when he see me. Oi smoked a pipe, and then tarned in and slep' for an hour or so; then awoke and spied five or six of the chaps a-whispering together up in a corner of the fok'sle. They often looked moy way, but there worn't loight enough to let 'em know that my eyes was open, and I lay secretly a-watching 'em, smelling mischief. Then a couple of 'em went on deck, and the rest lay down. Nothen happened for some time. Meanwhile Oi lay woide awake, listening and watching. 'Twas about seven bells, Oi reckon, when someone—Oi think it was Nakier—calls softly down through the hatch, and instantly all the fellows, who as I could ha' swore was sound asleep, dropped from their hammocks like one man, and the fok'sle was empty. I looked round to make sure that it were empty, then sneaks up and looks aft with my chin no higher than the coaming. I heered a loud shriek, and a cry of "O God! O God! Help! help!" and now, guessing what was happening, and believing that the tastin' of blood would drive them fellows mad, and that Oi should be the next if Jacob worn't already gone, him being at the wheel, as I might calculate by his not being forrard, Oi took and run, and here Oi am.'
He passed the back of his hand over his brow, following the action with a fling of his fingers from the wrist; and, indeed, it was now to be seen that his face streamed with sweat.
'Do you believe they have murdered the Captain?' cried Helga.
'I dorn't doubt it—I can't doubt it. There seemed two gangs of 'em. Oi run for my life, and yet I see two gangs,' answered Abraham.
'Horrible!' exclaimed the girl, looking at me with fixed eyes, yet she seemed more shocked than frightened.
'Did not I foresee this?' I exclaimed. 'Where were your senses, man—you who lived amongst them, ate and drank with them? It would be bad enough if they were white men; but how stands our case, do you think, in a ship seized by savages who have been made to hate us for our creed and for the colour of our skins?'
'Hark!' cried Helga.
We strained our hearing, but nothing was audible to me saving my heart, that beat loud in my ears.
'I thought I heard the sound of a splash,' she said.
'If they should ha' done for my mate, Jacob!' cried Abraham. 'As the Lord's good, 'twill be too hard. Fust wan, then another, and now nowt but me left of our little company as left Deal but a day or tew ago, as it seems when Oi looks back.'
'Are we to perish here like poisoned rats in a hole?' said I. 'If they clap the hatch-cover on, what's to become of us?'
'Who among them can navigate the ship?' asked Helga.
'Ne'er a one,' replied Abraham; 'that I can tell 'ee from recollecting of the questions Nakier's asted me from toime to toime.'
'But if the body of them should come below,' cried I, 'and force that door—as easily done as blowing out that light there—are we to be butchered with empty hands, looking at them without a lift of our arms, unless it be to implore mercy? Here are two of us—Englishmen! Are we to be struck down as if we were women?'
'There are three of us!' said Helga.
'What are our weapons?' I exclaimed, wildly sweeping the little hole of a cabin with my eyes. 'They have their knives!'
'Give me the handling of 'em one arter the other,' said Abraham, fetching a deep breath and then spitting on his hands, 'and I'll take the whole 'leven whilst ye both sit down and look on. But all of them at wanst—all dronk with rage and snapping round a man as if he was a sheep and they wolves!'—he breathed deeply again, slowly shaking his head.
'The planks in that bunk are loose,' said I, 'but what can we do with boards?'
'I will go on deck!' suddenly exclaimed Helga.
'You?' cried I. 'No, indeed! You will remain here. There must be two of us for them to deal with before the third can be come at!'
'I will go on deck!' she repeated. 'I have less cause to fear them than you. They know that I am acquainted with navigation—they have always looked at me with kindness in their faces. Let me go and talk to them!'
She made a step to the door—I gripped her arm, and brought her to my side and held her.
'What is to be done is for us two men to do!' said I. 'We must think, and we must wait.'
'Let me go!' she cried. 'They will listen to me, and I shall be able to make terms. Unless there be a navigator among them, what can they do with the ship in this great ocean?' She struggled, crying again: 'Let me go to them, Hugh!'
'Dorn't you do nothen of the sort, sir!' exclaimed Abraham. 'What'd happen? They'd tarn to and lock her up until they'd made an end of you and me, and then she'd be left alone aboard this wessel—alone, I mean, with eleven yaller savages. Gor' preserve us! If you let go of her, sir, Oi shall have to stop the road.'
There was something of deliberateness in his speech: his English spirit was coming back with the weakening of the horror that had filled him when he first came rushing below.
Someone knocked lightly on the door. At the same instant my eye was taken by the glance of lamp or candle flame in the opening in the bulkhead overlooking the narrow passage.
'Hush!' cried I.
The knock was repeated. It was a very soft tapping, as though made by a timid knuckle.
'Who is there?' I shouted, gathering myself together with a resolution to leap upon the first dark throat that showed; for I believed this soft knocking—this soundless approach—a Malay ruse, and my veins tingled with the madness that enters the blood of a man in the supreme moment whose expiry means life or death to him.
'It is me, master! Open, master! It is allee right!'
'That's Nakier!' exclaimed Abraham.
'Who is it?' I cried.
'Me, sah—Nakier. It is allee right, I say. Do not fear. Our work is done. We wish to speakee with you, and be friend.'
'How many of you are there outside?' I called.
'No man but Nakier,' he answered.
'How are we to know that?' bawled Abraham. 'The most of you have naked feet. A whole army of ye might sneak aft, and no one guess it.'
'I swear Nakier is alone. Lady, you shall trust Nakier. Our work is done; it is allee right, I say. See, you tink I am not alone: you are afraid of my knife; go a leetle way back—I trow my knife to you.'
We recoiled to the bulkhead, and Abraham roared 'Heave!' The knife fell upon the deck close to my feet. I pounced upon it as a cat upon a mouse, but dropped it with a cry. 'Oh, God, it is bloody!'
'Give it me!' exclaimed Abraham, in a hoarse shout; 'it'll be bloodier yet, now I've got it, if that there Nakier's a-playing false.'
Grasping it in his right hand, he slipped back the bolt, and opened the door. The sensations of a lifetime of wild experiences might have been concentrated in that one instant. I had heard and read so much about the treachery of the Malay that when Abraham flung open the little cabin door I was prepared for a rush of dusky shapes, and to find myself grappling—but not for life, since death I knew to be certain, armed as every creature of them was with the deadly blade of the sailor's sheath knife. Instead—in the corridor, immediately abreast of our cabin, holding a bull's-eye lamp in his hand, stood Nakier, who on seeing us put the light on the deck, and saluted us by bringing both hands to his brow. Abraham put his head out.
'There ain't nobody here but Nakier!' he cried.
'What have you done?' I exclaimed, looking at the man, who in the combined light showed plainly, and whose handsome features had the modest look, the prepossessing air, I had found when my gaze first rested on him in this ship.
'The Captain is kill—Pallunappachelly, he kill him. The mate is kill—with this han'.' He held up his arm.
'Where's moy mate?' thundered Abraham.
'No man touch him. Jacob, he allee right. Two only.' He held up two fingers. 'The Captain and Misser Jones. They treat us like dog, and we bite like dog,' he added, showing his teeth, but with nothing whatever of fierceness or wildness in his grin.
'What do you want?' I repeated.
'We wantchee you come speak with us. We allee swear on de Koran not to hurt you, but to serve you, and you serve we.'
I stood staring, not knowing how to act.
'He is to be trusted,' said Helga.
'But the others?' I said.
'They can do nothing without us.'
'Without one of us. But the others!'
'We may trust them,' she repeated, with an accent of conviction.
Nakier's eyes, gleaming in the lantern-light, were bent upon us as we whispered. He perceived my irresolution, and, once again putting down the bull's-eye lamp on the deck, he clasped and extended his hands in a posture of impassioned entreaty.
'We allee swear we no hurt you!' he cried in a voice of soft entreaty that was absolutely sweet with the melody of its tones; 'dat beautiful young lady—oh! I would kill here,' he cried, gesticulating as though he would stab his heart, 'before dat good, kind, clever lady be harm. Oh, you may trust us! We hab done our work. Mr. Wise, he be Capt'n; you be gentleman—passengaire; you live upstair and be very much comfortable. De beautiful young lady, she conduct dis ship to Afric. Oh, no, no, no! you are allee safe. My men shall trow down dere knives upon de table when you come, and we swear on de Koran to be your friend, and you be friend to we.'
'Let's go along with him, Mr. Tregarthen,' said Abraham. 'Nakier, I shall stick to this here knife. Where's moy mate Jacob? If 'ere a man of ye's hurted him——'
'It is no time to threaten,' I whispered angrily, shoving past him. 'Come, Helga! Nakier, pick up that bull's-eye and lead the way, and, Abraham, follow with that lantern, will you?'
In silence we gained the hatch. It lay open. Nakier sprang through it, and, one after the other, we ascended. The wind had fallen scantier since I was on deck last, and though the loftier canvas was asleep, silent as carved marble, and spreading in spectral wanness under the bright stars, there was no weight in the wind to hold steady the heavy folds of the fore and main courses, which swung in and out with the dull sound of distant artillery as the barque leaned from side to side. The cuddy lamp was brightly burning, and the first glance I sent through the open door showed me the whole of the crew, as I for the instant supposed—though I afterwards found that one of them was at the wheel—standing at the table, ranged on either hand of it, all as motionless as a company of soldiers drawn up on parade. Every dark face was turned our way, and never was shipboard picture more startling and impressive than this one of stirless figures, dusky fiery eyes, knitted brows, most of the countenances hideous, but all various in their ugliness. Their caps and queer headgear lay in a heap upon the table. Nakier entered and paused, with a look to us to follow. Helga was fearlessly pressing forwards. I caught her by the hand and cried to Nakier:
'Those men are all armed.'
He rounded upon them, and uttered some swift feverish sentence in his native tongue. In a moment every man whipped out his knife from the sheath in which it lay buried at the hip, and placed it upon the table. Nakier again spoke, pronouncing the words with a passionate gesture, on which Punmeamootty gathered the knives into one of the caps and handed them to Nakier, who brought the cap to Helga and placed it at her feet. On his doing this, Abraham threw the blood-stained knife he held into the cap.
It was at that moment we were startled by a cry of 'Below there!'
'Whoy, it's Jacob!' roared Abraham, and stepping backwards and looking straight up, he shouted, 'Jacob, ahoy! Where are ye, mate?'
'Up in the maintop, pretty nigh dead,' came down the leather-lunged response from the silence up above.
'Thank God you're alive!' cried Abraham. 'It's all roight now—it's all roight now.'
'Who's agoing to make me believe it?' cried Jacob.
I stared up, and fancied I could just perceive the black knob of his head projected over the rim of the top.
'You can come down, Jacob,' I cried. 'All danger, I hope, is over.'
'Danger over?' he bawled. 'Whoy, they've killed the mate and chucked him overboard, and if I hadn't taken to my heels and jumped aloft they'd have killed me.'
'No, no—not true; not true, sah!' shrieked Nakier. 'Come down, Jacob! It is allee right!'
'Where's the Captain?' cried Jacob.
'Him overboard!' answered Nakier. 'It is allee right, I say!'
A shudder ran through me as I glanced at the cabin which the Captain had occupied. I cannot express how the horror of this sudden, shocking, bloody tragedy was heightened by Nakier's cool and easy acceptance of the deed, as though the two men whom he and his had slain were less to his sympathies than had they been a couple of fowls whose necks had been wrung.
'Pray come down, Jacob!' said Helga, sending her voice clear as a bell into the silent towering heights. 'You, as well as Abraham, are to be known as an Englishman.'
This little scornful stroke, which was extremely happy in that it was unintelligible to Nakier and the others, had the desired effect.
'Why, if it is all right, then I suppose it be all right,' I heard Jacob say, and a few moments after his figure, with 'longshore clumsiness, came slowly down the rigging.
As he sprang from the bulwark rail on to the deck, he whipped off his cap and dashed it down on to the planks, and with the utmost agitation of voice and manner danced around his cap as he vociferated while he flourished his fist at Abraham:
'Now, what did Oi say? All along Oi've been a-telling ye that that there pork job was agoing to get our throats cut. Whoy didn't ye stop it? Whoy didn't ye tell the Capt'n what you seed and knowed? Froight! Whoy, I moight ha' died in that there top and rolled overboards, and what yarn was ye going to give my missis as to my hending, if so be as ever ye got ashore at Deal agin?'
He continued to shout after this fashion, meanwhile tumbling and reeling about his cap as though it were a mark for him upon the theatre of this deck on which to act his part. But though it appeared a very ecstasy of rage in him, the outbreak seemed wholly due to revulsion of feeling. Nakier stood motionlessly eyeing him; the others also remained at table, all preserving their sentinel postures. At last the fellow made an end, put his cap on, and was silent, breathing hard.
'Will you come in, sah? Will you enter, lady? Misser Wise, it is allee right. Come along, Jacob, my mate!'
Thus saying, Nakier re-entered the cuddy, and the four of us followed him. There was a dark stain on the bare plank close against the coaming or ledge of the door of the Captain's cabin. It was the short, wild, startled sideways spring which Abraham gave that caused me to look at it. The very soul within me seemed to shrink at the sight.
Nakier exclaimed, 'It is easy to scrape out,' motioning with his little delicately-shaped hand as though he scraped. He then addressed one of the fellows at the table, who nodded, sweeping the air with his arm as he did so.
It now occurred to me, with the marvellous swiftness of thought, that the cap containing the men's knives still lay upon the deck where Nakier had lodged it at Helga's feet, and the instant motion of my mind was to return to the quarter-deck, pick the cap up, and heave it over the rail. But I reflected that not only might an act of this sort enrage the crew by losing them their knives—it would also imply profound distrust on our part. I also considered that, if they designed to kill us, they would be able to manage that business very well without their knives—for there was the carpenter's tool-chest forward, which would supply them with plenty of deadly weapons, not to mention the cabin knives, which Punmeamootty had charge of, and of which several were at all times to be found in the galley. All this passed through my mind in the space that a man might count five in, so amazing is the velocity of imagination; and my resolution was formed in this matter even while I continued to measure the few steps which separated the table from the cuddy door.
Nakier went to the head of the table, and, putting his hand upon the Captain's chair, exclaimed, bowing with inimitable grace to Helga as he spoke:
'Will de sweet mees sit here?'
She passed along the little file of five men and took the chair. I do not know whether she had seen that mark on the deck I have spoken of. She was of a deathlike whiteness, but her eyes shone spiritedly as she ran them over the coloured faces of the queer figures erect on either hand the table, and never at any time since the hour when the dawn showed me her pretty face aboard the Anine, apparelled as she then was as a boy, had I observed more composure and resolution in her countenance.
I stood close beside her, and Abraham and his mate were on her right. Nakier went on gliding feet to the fore-end of the table and said something to the men. What language he expressed himself in I did not then, and still do not, know. The effect of his speech was to cause the whole of them to extend their arms towards us with the forefingers of both hands together. The posture, for the moment, was absolutely as though to Nakier's command they had simultaneously levelled firearms at us! Jacob fell back a step with a growl of alarm.
'What is all this, Nakier?' I called out.
'It is to say we are all your brodders, sah. It is my country sign of friendship.'
Their hands fell to their sides, but immediately afterwards Nakier spoke again to them, whereupon every man levelled his forefingers, as before, at Helga. Again Nakier spoke, and Punmeamootty left the cuddy.
'I wish he'd talk English,' exclaimed Abraham, wiping his forehead. 'Who's to know what's agoing to happen?'
'It is allee right, Misser Wise,' said Nakier, with a soft smile, half of reproach, half of encouragement. 'Punmeamootty hab gone to fetch de Koran for we to swear to be true and not harm you.'