“No, no,” I cried, “go quietly.”
“Jimmy come ’long Mass Joe?” he said next.
“If they will let you,” I replied; “but if they will not, go back to your own place quietly.”
“Mass Joe no kind poor Jimmy,” he whimpered. “Want kick um. Mass Joe say no.”
“Wait till I tell you, Jimmy,” I replied. “Now go quietly.”
He made an attempt to accompany me, but the blacks seized him sharply and led him one way, me the other; and as the sun set and the darkness began to come on, I lay in my hut watching the boy and the tall painted chief talking earnestly together, for I could not see Jimmy’s prison from inside my own.
I felt lighter of heart and more ready to take a hopeful view of my position now that my sufferings from my injuries were less, and that I had a companion upon whom I could depend. But all the same I could not help feeling that my position was a very precarious one. But when I was cool and calm I was ready to laugh at the idea about cannibalism, and to think it was the result of imagination.
“No,” I said to myself as I lay there, “I don’t think they will kill us, and I am certain they will not eat us. We shall be made slaves and kept to work for them—if they can keep us!”
As I lay there listening to the different sounds made in the village dropping off one by one in the darkness, I grew more elate. I was in less pain, and I kept recalling the many instances Jimmy had shown me of his power to be what he called “cunning-artful.” With his help I felt sure that sooner or later we should be able to escape.
Drowsiness began to creep over me now, and at last, after listening to the hard breathing of the spear-armed savage whose duty it was to watch me, I began to wonder whether Gyp would come that night.