My guard, for there was still one at the door, jumped up and stared in, while Jimmy and his captors looked in my direction.
Jimmy was the first to break silence by shouting loudly: “Mass Joe! Mass Joe!”
“Here!” I shouted back; but I repented the next moment, for Jimmy uttered a yell and made a bound to run towards where he had heard the sound.
The result was that one savage threw himself down before the prisoner, who fell headlong, and before he could recover, half a dozen of the blacks were sitting upon him.
My heart seemed to stand still, and I felt that poor Jimmy’s end had come, but to my delight I could see that our captors were laughing at the poor fellow’s mad efforts to escape, and I shouted to him once again:
“Be quiet! Lie still!”
There was no answer, for one of the men was sitting on Jimmy’s head; but he ceased struggling, and after a while the blacks rose, circled about him with their spears, and a couple of them began to push my companion towards the tree to which he had before been bound.
“Jimmy no fight?” he shouted to me.
“Not now,” I shouted back. “Wait.”
“All rightums,” cried Jimmy: “but gettum waddy back, gibs um bang, bang—knockum downum—whack, whack—bangum, bangum!”