“Surely you are not going to smoke those, my boy?” said the doctor, who looked quite aghast. “Wait a few years before you try anything of that kind.”
“Why?” said the boy, with an arch look. “Because if you begin now you will most likely be laying up a store of trouble for the future in the shape of a disordered digestion, which may hang about you all your life.”
“I’m not going to smoke them,” said Carey, laughing. “Look here, I roll each one up tight in a bit of paper, and then cut it with a sharp knife into six, ready to give the black fellows if they behave themselves. They’ll do anything for me for a bit of tobacco.”
“But don’t they ever try to take it away from you?”
“Not now. They tried snatching once or twice, but I gave the one who did a good sharp crack, and they left it off, for I’m always fair to them.”
“A dangerous game to play.”
“Oh, no. The others always laugh at the one who’s hit. They don’t seem to mind taking a crack from me.”
Those fishing trips were an intense pleasure to Carey, for there was so much that was novel. Now fish with scales as brilliant as the feathers of humming-birds would be caught; now the blacks would be warning their companions to beware of the black and yellow or yellow snakes.
“Mumkull—kill a fellow,” Black Jack said, and to emphasise his meaning he put out a hand in the water towards one of the basking serpents, snatched it back as if bitten, and went through a regular pantomime indicative of his sufferings. First he drew up one leg, then the other, threw himself on his back in the bottom of the canoe, kicked out, threw his arms in the air, straightened himself out, rolled over, and then, with a wonderful display of strength, curved his spine and sprang over back again, repeating the performance, which was wonderfully like the flopping of a freshly caught roach in a punt, even to the beating of the tail, which was here represented by the man’s legs. By degrees this grew more slow; then there was a flap at intervals, finishing with one heavy rap, and he lay quite still as if dead.
“Dat a way,” he cried, raising his head and grinning hugely. “Mumkull—kill a fellow.”