“Yes, Tom,” said Murray thoughtfully.
“Nice beauties,” continued Tom, “and so far as I can make out, sir, there was going to be a reg’lar rising to-night, or last night. The plantation niggers had come to the way of thinking that it was time to mutiny and kill off them as had brought ’em here, and so that there Huggins—my word, shouldn’t I like to have the job of huggin’ him!—got to know of it and brings his schooners’ crews to show ’em they was not the sort of chaps to carry out a mutiny of that kind.”
“Poor wretches, no,” said Murray sadly.
“That’s right, Mr Murray, sir. Poor wretches it is. You see, sir, they’re a different sort o’ nigger altogether. I got to know somehow from a marchant skipper as traded off the West Coast that there’s two sorts o’ tribes there, fighting tribes as fights by nature, and tribes as ’tisn’t their nature to fight at all. Well, sir, these here first ones makes war upon them as can’t fight, carries off all they can as prisoners, and sells ’em to the slave-traders. Then it comes at last to a mutiny like this here we’ve seen, and the poor wretches, as you calls them, is worse fighters than they was afore, and slaving skippers like Huggins collects their schooners’ crews together and drives the black mutineers before ’em like a flock o’ Baa, baa, black sheep, kills a lot and frightens a lot more to death, and then things goes on just the same as before.—Comfortable, sir?”
“No, Tom. Are you?”
“No, sir. But that’s about how it is, arn’t it?”
“Yes, I believe so, Tom.”
“Then it goes on as I said till their medicine man—sort o’ priest, I suppose—stirs ’em to make another try to get the upper hand. Talks a lot o’ that nonsense to ’em about fetish and Obeah, as they calls it, and shows the poor benighted chaps a bit of hanky panky work with a big snake like that we saw to-night. Makes ’em think the snake’s horrid poisonous, and that it can’t bite him as handles it, because he’s took some stuff or another. Rum game that there was with that sarpent, and—I say, sir, don’t you think we’d better get up now for a bit and just mark time? You see, we can’t walk, for if we do we shall lose ourselves.”
“We might take it in turns, and just keep touch of one another.”
“What, sir? No, thankye. Ketch me trying that way again! We’ve had enough of that. Fust thing, though, let’s see how our wounded’s getting on.”