“What him mean? what him mean? Yah! yah!”
“Yes. What does it mean?”
“What him mean? Yah! What didn't you hear Missy Besford miscall him an abominable egotisk?”
“Yes,” said Fullalove, winking to Kenealy; “but we don't know what it means. Do you, sir?”
“Iss, sar. Dat ar expression he signify a darned old cuss dat says to dis child, 'My lord Vespasium, take benevolence on your insidious slave, and invest me in a bread-bag,' instead of fighting for de ladies like a freenindependum citizen. Now you two go fast asleep; dis child lie shut one eye and open de oder bery wide open on dat ar niggar.” And with this mysterious threat he stalked away.
His contempt for a black skin, his ebullitions of unexpected ire, his turgid pomposity, and love of long terms, may make the reader smile; but they could hardly amuse his friends just then; everything that touched upon Dodd was too serious now. The surgeon sat up with him nearly all night: in the daytime those two friends sat for hours in his cabin, watching sadly, and silently moistening his burning brow and his parched lips.
At length, one afternoon, there came a crisis, which took an unfavourable turn. Then the surgeon, speaking confidentially to these two staunch friends, inquired if they had asked themselves what should be done with the body? “Why I ask,” said he, “is because we are in a very hot latitude; and if you wish to convey it to Barkington, the measures ought to be taken in time: in fact, within an hour or two after death.”
The poor friends were shocked and sickened by this horrible piece of foresight. But Colonel Kenealy said, with tears, in his eyes, that his old friend should never be buried like a kitten.
“Then you had better ask Sharpe to give me an order for a barrel of spirits,” said the surgeon.
“Yes, yes, for two if you like. Oh, don't die, Dodd, my poor old fellow. How shall I ever face his wife—I remember her, the loveliest girl you ever saw—with such a tale as this? She will think it a cruel thing I should come out of it without a scratch, and a ten times better man to be dead: and so it is; it is cruel, it is unjust, it is monstrous; him to be lying there, and we muffs to be sitting croaking over him and watching for his last breath like three cursed old ravens.” And the stout colonel groaned aloud.