“Study them, sir, no. They like it. They thoroughly enjoy the bit of excitement. If you put it to them you’ll soon find which way they go.”
“I should like to put it to them,” said Sir John quietly.
“Have the lads all on deck,” said the captain.
The hands were piped aft, and the captain waited for Sir John to speak, but he remained silent and looked at his son.
“Ask the men which they would prefer to do—stay here, or sail farther on account of the risks from the blacks.”
Jack flushed a little, but he acquitted himself pretty well, and a hurried conversation went on for a few moments, ending in Lenny being put forward to answer, amidst a burst of cheering, which kept on breaking out again and again whenever the man essayed to speak, and at last he turned round angrily.
“Lookye here, mates,” he cried, “hadn’t you better come and say it yourselves? You’ve about cheered it out o’ me, and made me forget what I meant to say.”
“All right, matey,” cried one of the men merrily, “let ’em have it; we’ve done now.”
“Well, gentlemen,” said Lenny, taking off his straw hat and looking in it as if the lost words had come through his skull to get hidden in the lining. “We all on us feels like this—as it wouldn’t be English to let a lot o’ lubbers o’ niggers, who arn’t got half a trouser to a whole hunderd on ’em, lick us out of the place. ’Sides, we arn’t half seen the island yet, and ’bout ten on us has got a sort o’ wager on as to who shall get up atop o’ the mountain first and look down into the fire.”
“Hear, hear, hear!” cried the men, and encouraged by this, Lenny began to wave his arm about and behave like a semaphore signalling to distant crews in his excitement.