"Who in the world can Charley's 'savages' be, Ned?" asked Jack, when the story was finished.
"Negro squatters," answered Ned; "I didn't think there were any on Bee Island."
"What do you mean by negro squatters?"
"Why, negroes who, instead of hiring themselves out or renting land, have simply squatted on the island, cultivating little patches, and living by hunting and fishing. There are a good many on plantations that haven't been cultivated since the war. You see, when the war ended there were many men who had large bodies of land—some of them owning half a dozen big plantations—but with very little capital. They have not been able, for want of money, to resume the cultivation of all their abandoned plantations, so there are many large tracts still lying idle and unoccupied, and some of the negroes, not caring to hire as hands, or to rent land, have squatted here and there. They are generally the worst of the negroes; men without thrift, and almost untouched by civilization. They prefer a wild life, and live by fishing, hunting, and stealing from choice."
"But, I say," said Charley, "my savage wasn't a tame negro at all. He couldn't speak English I tell you."
"No more can many others of the old sea-island and rice-field negroes. They talk a jargon which only themselves and the old-time overseers ever understood. The fact is that many of them really were savages before the war,—untamed Guinea savages. They or their parents were brought here from Africa, and they lived all their lives here on these coast plantations, rarely seeing a white person except their overseers, and learning scarcely any thing of civilized life. They were not at all like the negroes up in Aiken, and all over the South for that matter. They were simply savages who had learned to work under an overseer, and when the war ended the worst of them relapsed into the ways of savage life instead of trying to improve themselves as the negroes everywhere else did. They hadn't learned enough to want to be civilized."
"But what did that fellow get after Charley for?"
"Because we've been robbing their rice field without knowing it."
"I didn't think of that. I thought the rice was wild—self-seeded."
"Probably it is," answered Ned, "but they regard it as theirs for all that, just as they think this island is theirs, although it belongs to my uncle."