After a time, with the boy seeming to watch defiantly beside the great fellow, the black revived sufficiently to swallow some bread soaked in wine-and-water; the dull, filmy look left his eyes; and at last he dropped off into a heavy sleep.
“Shall we try and carry him up to one of the sheds, sir?” said Morgan.
“No; the poor fellow has had a very narrow escape from death,” replied my father; “and I do not know even now that he will recover. Fetch a few boards to lay against that bough, and tie the boat-mast up there, and fasten the sail against it, so as to act as a bit of shelter to keep off the sun. George, put some dry grass in a sack, and it will do for a pillow.”
We set about our task at once.
“Lor’ ha’ mussy!” grumbled Morgan, “what a fuss we are making about a nigger. Pillows for him! Why don’t master say, ‘Get the best bedroom ready, and put on clean sheets’? I say, Master George, think he’d come off black?”
But all the same Morgan worked hard, with the great drops of perspiration running off his face, till he had rigged up the shelter, the black sleeping heavily the while, but the boy watching every act of ours in a suspicious way, his eyes rolling about, and his lips twitching as if he were ready to fly at us and bite.
“I know,” said Morgan, all at once with a broad grin, as he was sloping some boards lately cut from a tree over the sleeping negro.
“Know what?” I said.
“What young sooty’s a thinking. He’s a young canny ball, and he believes we’re going to make a fire and roast ’em for a feast.”
Whatever the boy thought, he had ceased to struggle to get away, but lay quite still with his arm stretched-out, so that he could touch the big negro, and he was in this attitude when my father came back from the house.