“Don’t yer fink it’s dyngerous a-coming up ’ere alone to catch myderers and cannibals?” said Adams as he took another deep swill from his rum-flask and glanced nervously across the gullies and on the sombre forests of mahogany trees. Then he proceeded to remind Biglow that de Cripsny had intimated that the agents of the dreadful papaloi roamed the forests, looking out for likely folk whom they could strangle and sell to the fetish priests.
“Almighty Gawd, don’t!” suddenly moaned Adams.
Biglow had replied to Adams’s fears by bringing his huge hand down with a tremendous whack on the sailorman’s back, and at the same time had given vent to a peal of laughter that echoed across the silent hills.
Adams rolled his eye. It was easy enough to see that he was losing his temper. There’s a limit to all things. Even Clensy realised that it was more than unwise to give such a shout when they might be within a mile of the vaudoux stronghold. Observing Adams’s consternation, Bartholomew Biglow only laughed the louder. When the swarms of bright-plumaged lories and frightened cockatoos, that had ascended in screeching clouds from their perches, had settled down again on the topmost branches of the mahogany and palm-trees, Biglow cheered Clensy and Adams up by saying, “Look ye here, I can lick a hundred niggers myself, and I happen to know for a fact that there are only about twenty-five Haytian niggers in the fetish hole which we are bound for.”
“Um!” mumbled Adams, as he began to look more healthy and pleasant.
Clensy also looked more amiably settled in his mind. The fact is that their giant comrade’s fearless eyes, as he sat before them pushing huge morsels of toasted damper into his mouth, inspired them with fullest confidence over the possibilities of the enterprise.
“‘Ow on earth yer know all about these ’ere myderers and the exact plyce where they worshyps their gawds and women up ’ere, licks me!” said Adams, as he poured another dose of rum into his mug of hot tea.
“I take good care to know everything that’s worth knowing when I come out on a game like this. Do you think I’m leaving all the knowing to the likes of you?” said Biglow, as he put forth his big boot and scattered the fire’s glowing ash till it seemed that the awakening constellations of the darkening skies were sparkling in miniature in the gloom of fast-coming night which had suddenly fallen over the silent gullies.
“Smoke tells tales; can be seen miles away,” said Biglow, as he glanced towards the mountains, far away to the south-west.
“Wish you’d thought of thet afore yer ’ollared so loud just now,” said Adams in a complaining voice.