But as the shouting, laughing boys dashed toward them, free and unharmed, the gun dropped from Mr. Pauling’s hand and clattered on the pebbles and the next instant he was clasping the boys in an embrace like a bear’s.
Behind the boys, gathered in little knots and chattering excitedly like a flock of parrots, the surprised negroes had gathered at the edge of the forest and as Rawlins stared at them and then at the boys a puzzled expression was on his face.
“Say, what’s the big idea?” he demanded, as the boys capered and danced about, talking and laughing. “You said you were the prisoners of savages and here you are free as birds and no sign of a savage. Just a bunch of ordinary niggers. It gets me!”
“But we thought they were savages,” Tom tried to explain. “And we were prisoners.”
Then in hurried, disjointed sentences the two boys related the gist of their story while the others listened in amazement.
“Hello!” cried Rawlins. “Is this the old Bally-hoo coming?”
As Rawlins spoke, the big negro was approaching and with a rather sickly grin on his face he spoke to the new arrivals in his odd jargon of Creole and broken English.
“Yep, I guess so!” grinned Rawlins. “Here you, Sam. You’ve lived in the French Islands. Can you understand this bird?”
Sam, still suspicious and with the memory of Voodoo and devil dancers’ tom-toms in his mind, stepped forward.
“Yas, sir, Chief,” he replied, “Ah can talk Creole, Chief.”