But he owed quite as much assistance to attitude and gesture, for making himself understood, as to speech, for in that he was still, at times, quite unintelligible. To dumb shew he was probably familiar, the brevity and paucity of his own dialect making it necessarily a principal source of communication at Ulitea and at Otaheite. What he knew of English he must have caught instinctively and mechanically, as it is caught by children; and, it may be, only the faster from having his attention unencumbered with grammatical difficulties, or orthographical contrarieties: yesterday served for the past, in all its distances: tomorrow, for the future, in all its dependences.
The King allowed him a handsome pension, upon which he lived perfectly at ease, and very happily: and he entertained, in return, as gratefully loyal a devotion to his Majesty as if he had been a native born subject.
He was very lively, yet gentle; and even politely free from any forwardness or obtrusion; holding back, and keeping silent, when not called into notice, with as much delicacy and reserve, as any well bred European. And his confidence in the benevolence and honour of the strangers with whom he had trusted his person and his life, spoke a nature as intrepid as it was guileless.
Dr. Burney inquired of him whether he had lately seen the King?
“Yes,” he answered, “Yes. King George bid me, ‘Omy, you go home.’ O! dood man, King George! ver dood man!—not ver bad!”
He then endeavoured, very pleasingly, to discriminate between his joy at returning to his native land, and his grief in quitting England. “Lord Sandwich,” he said, “bid me—Mr. Omy, you two ships: one, two: you go home. Omy make ver fine bow;” which he rose to perform, and with grace and ease; “den Omy say, My lord, ver much oblige!”
The Doctor asked whether he had been at the Opera?
His answer was a violent and ear-jarring squeak, by way of imitating Italian singing. Nevertheless, he said that he began to like it a great deal better than he had done at first.
He now missed Richard, the Doctor’s youngest son,[1] and, upon being told that he was gone to school, clapped his hands, and cried, “O, learn book? ver well.” Then, putting his hands together, and opening and shutting them, to imitate turning over the leaves of a book, he attempted to describe the humour of some school that he had been taken to see. “Boys here;” he cried: “boys there; boys all over. Master call. One boy come up. Do so,—” muttering a confused jargon to imitate reading. “Not ver well. Ver bad. Master do so!”
He then described the master giving the boy a rap on the shoulder with the book. “Ha! ha!—Boy like ver bad! not ver well. Boy do so;” making wry faces. “Poor boy! not ver dood. Boy ver bad.”