"Spare me! spare me!" cries the child. "I'll tell if you'll only spare me."
"Out with it!" says Rodrigues.
"I was carrying 'em to Tonga."
Rodrigues hereupon nodded to a group of fellows, who, taking the boy for their guide, went forward and so down the hatchway below. Meanwhile, the captain turned upon his heel, so that he faced the window where Lady Biddy was watching, and she observed that there was a malicious smile on his wicked face, as though he was satisfied to find his surmise justified. And while he was walking towards the coach with his head bent, he raised his eyes, yet without lifting his head, and under his black brows cast a strange glance at my lady.
Presently those men who had gone below returned, bringing with them the boy and the negro. And this man was fearful to look on because of the mess of dried blood upon him, an open wound in his shoulder, and the sickness of fear in his face as he was haled before Rodrigues. Yet, for all his fear, there was rage of passion in his eye as he caught sight of Lady Biddy, and also when he looked at the boy, who shrank away from him in dread.
"You look sick, Tonga. What has ailed you?" asked Rodrigues, as if he looked to get a satisfactory answer.
Tonga nodded, and in a hoarse voice told, with such queer speech as negroes use, how the heat had made him giddy, so that he fell down the hatch into the hold, and lay there unable to move.
"You seem to have fallen on something that ought not to be in the hold," says Rodrigues, going close up to him and looking at his wound, the fellow being stark naked to the waist. "It looks as if it had been done with a knife. How's that?"
The negro swore he knew not how he had come by this wound.
"You can not tell me?" says Rodrigues, airily.