Again the interpreter awaited his master's voice before answering.
"No man of the Blackbeards is among the men of Umanuh," he then denied.
"If he is not among them he is near them," was Lourenço's certain reply. "He has been seen both by other Blackbeards and by the Mayorunas. I, too, have seen him. He bears on his bones the sign that his mind is out of his skull. His eyes are green and his hair touched with white. Umanuh and his men know well that I speak true."
The pause this time was longer than before.
"There was such a man, but he is gone."
"Then Makkay asks his friend Umanuh to find that one. A chief so wise can easily find him where others would see only water and mud."
"If he could be found what would the great Blackbeard leader do with him?"
Lourenço thought swiftly. To say the Raposa was McKay's friend would do little good. Friendship meant nothing to this unfeeling brute. Therefore the bushman insinuated something which his cruel mind could comprehend.
"If a Red Bone man abandoned his people and went to another tribe, what would Umanuh do to him when he was found?"
A cold glimmer in the chief's eyes showed that he thought he understood. Moreover, he would much like to see what sort of torture this hard-faced Blackbeard would use on a fugitive. It might be something even more fiendish than his own pastimes. So the next reply came promptly.