"What I'd like"—it was Davie Paine's heavy, slow voice—"is just a drink of water and some ship's bread."
"Well," said Roger, "we'll find neither bread nor rubies lying on the beach, and since we're agreed that it's best to get out of sight, let's set off."
He was about to plunge blindly into the marsh, when Blodgett, who had been ranging restlessly while we talked, cried, "Here's a road! As I'm alive here's a road!"
We trooped over to where he stood, and saw, sure enough, an opening in the brush and grass where the ground was beaten hard as if by the passing of many feet.
"Well, let's be on our way," said Blodgett, starting forward.
"No, sah, dat ain't no way foh to go!" the cook exclaimed. He stood there, head thrown forward, chin out-thrust, the cleaver, which he had carried all the time since we left the ship, hanging at his side.
"Why not?" asked Roger.
"'Cause, sah, whar dey's a road dey's humans and humans heahbouts on dese yeh islands is liable to be drefful free with strangers. Yass, sah, if we go a-walkin' along dat yeh road, fust thing we know we's gwine walk into a whole mob of dem yeh heathens. Den whar'll we be?" In answer to his question, the negro thrust out his left hand and, grasping an imaginary opponent by the throat, raised the cleaver, and swept it through the air with a slicing motion. Looking keenly at us to be sure that we grasped the significance of his pantomime he remarked, "Ah want mah ol' head to stay put."
"There ain't going to be no village till we come to trees," said Davie Paine slowly. "If there is, we can see it anyhow, and if there isn't, this road'll take us across the marsh. Once we're on the other side, we can leave the road and take to the hills."
"There's an idea," Roger cried. "How about it, Bennie?"