Chapter Eight.
How I ran from the Whitebird Catchers.
Yes, I may as well own to it: I was terribly frightened, but my first thoughts were as to what had become of my companions. Jack Penny and the doctor must have been seized at the same time as I. Jimmy might have managed to escape. Perhaps his black skin would make him be looked upon as a friend. But the old captain, what about him? He would return to the schooner with his men and be seized, and knocked on the head for certain. The fierce resistance he would make certainly would cause his death, and I shuddered at the thought.
Then I began to think of my mother and father, how I should have failed in helping them; and I remember thinking what a good job it was that my mother would never know exactly what had happened to me. Better the long anxiety, I thought, of watching and waiting for my return than to know I had been killed like this.
“But I’m not killed yet,” I thought, as the blood flushed to my face. “I’ll have a run for it, if I can.”
I had not much time given me to think, for I was dragged to my feet, and out into a large open place where there were huts and trees, and there before me lay the sea with our schooner, but the other was gone; and as I recalled the fire of the previous night I knew that she must have been burned to the water’s edge and then sunk.
I began wondering about what must have been the fate of the other schooner’s crew, and somehow it seemed that they deserved it. Then I began thinking of my own friends, and then, very selfishly no doubt, about myself.
But I had little time for thought, being hurried along and placed in the middle of a crowd of the savages, all of whom seemed to be rolling their eyes and looking at me as if enjoying my position.
“Well,” I thought to myself, “it is enough to scare anybody; but I’ll try and let them see that I belong to a superior race, and will not show what I feel.”
My eyes kept wandering about eagerly, first to look where my companions were placed, but as I saw no sign of them I began to hope that they might have escaped; secondly, to see which would be the best course to take if I ran for my life. For I could run, and pretty swiftly, then. The hardy life I had led out in the bush, with Jimmy for my companion, had made me light of foot and tolerably enduring.