He gravely nodded.
"It is a wise precaution," he said at last, "although I prophesy that they will use us further before the time comes when we must fight for our lives."
So we both slept that night with new charges in the pistols by our heads, and Arnold, very likely, as well as I, dreamed of the utterly reckless, lawless men with whom we were associated. I question, though, if Arnold thought as much as I of the stern man in the cane house on the riverbank, or if he thought at all of the girl whose white face and dark eyes I could not forget.
For another day we continued to lie in the river; but the brig, alow and aloft, bustled with various activities. We sorted out firearms on the cabin floor, and charts and maps on the cabin table, and on the spar-deck we piled a large store of provisions. And in the afternoon Matterson took Captain North in the quarter boat down to the mouth of the river, and there taught him the bearings of the channel.
Side by side Arnold and I watched all that went forward, here lending a hand at whatever task came our way, there noting keenly how the stores were arranged.
"Well, sir," said Arnold, quietly, when Captain North for a moment stood beside us in preoccupied silence, "are we about to load a cargo of Africans?"
"I assure you I'd like to know that," the captain replied, with one of his quick glances.
Uncle Seth gave me an occasional curt word or sentence—he was in one of his arrogant moods; Matterson talked to me vaguely and at length of great times ahead; O'Hara watched me with hostile and suspicious glances. And still Arnold and I, whenever occasion offered, put our heads together and made what we could of the various preparations. Our surmises, time showed, were not far wrong.
And all this while I had watched the clearing ashore and had seen neither the missionary nor any other white man.
When, in the evening, all hands were ordered aft, we on the quarter deck looked down and saw the men standing expectantly to hear whatever was to be said. A thousand rumors had spread throughout the vessel, and of what was really afoot they knew less, even, than Arnold and I. There was Abe Guptil with his kindly face upturned, Pedro with his monkey on his shoulder and what seemed to me a devilish gleam in his eye, and all the rest. As they gathered close under us, the light from the lanterns slung in the rigging revealed every one of them to my curious gaze.