His voice, when he spoke, gave me a start.
"Look dah, boy! Look dah! Dey's sumpin' funny, yass, sah. 'Tain't safe foh to truck with ha'nts, no sah! You can't make dis yeh nigger think a winkin' fire-bug of a fly-by-night ship ain't a ha'nt."
"Ha'nts," said Kipping mildly, "ha'nts is bad things for niggers, but they don't hurt white men."
"Lemme tell you, you Kipping, it ain't gwine pay you to be disrespectable to de cook." Frank stuck his angry face in front of the mild man's. "Ef you think—ha!"—He stopped suddenly, his eyes fixed on something far beyond Kipping, over whose shoulder he now was looking. "Look dah! Look dah! What Ah say? Hey? What Ah say? Look dah! Look dah!"
Startled by the cook's fierce yell, we turned as if a gun had been fired; but we saw only that the boat was coming about.
"Look dah! Look dah! See 'em row! Don' tell me dat ain't no ha'nt!" Jumping up and down, waving his arms wildly, contorting his irregular features till he resembled a gorilla, he continued to yell in frenzy.
Although there seemed to be no cause for any such outburst, the rest of us now were alarmed by the behavior of the men in the boat. Having come about, they were racing back to the Island Princess as fast as ever they could, and the captain and Mr. Falk, if we could judge by their gestures, were urging them to even greater efforts.
"Look dah! Look dah! Don't you tell me dey ain't seen a ha'nt, you
Kipping!"
As they approached, I heard Roger Hamlin say sharply to the mate, "Mr. Thomas, that ship yonder is drifting down on us rapidly. See! They're sheeting home the topsail."
I could see that Mr. Thomas, who evidently thought Roger's fear groundless, was laughing, but I could not hear his reply. In any case he gave no order to prepare for action until the boat came within earshot and the captain abruptly hailed him and ordered him to trip anchor and prepare to make sail.