“A spark might set the powder off.”
“Oh!” ejaculated Pomp. Then, “What powder do if ’park send um off?”
“Blow the fire out and send the ducks into the river.”
“What? An’ de ’gator get um? Pomp not cook de duck for ’gator. ’Gator eat de duck raw, and no pick um fedder. Take de gun away.”
I was already doing so, and standing it up behind us against a patch of low bushes, I hung the powder and shot pouches by their straps to the iron ramrod. Then going back to my place I sat watching the cooking, as the boy turned and re-turned the birds, which grew browner and more appetising every moment.
There were faults in that cooking, no doubt. There was neither plate nor dish, no bread, no salt or pepper, and no table-cloth. But there was something else—young, healthy appetite, as we sat at last in the bright morning sunshine, drawn back now from the fire, Pomp and I, each with a roasting-stick in one hand, his knife in the other, cutting off the juicy brown bits, and eating them with the greatest of gusto, after an incision had been made, and the whole of the hardened interior had been allowed to fall out into the fire.
We hardly spoke, but went on eating, Pomp watching me and cutting the bird exactly as I did mine; then picking each bone as it was detached from the stick, and so on and on, till we had each finished his duck. Our hands were not very clean, and we had no table napkins for our lips; but as we ate that meal, I can safely say for myself that it was the most delicious repast I ever had.
Then we sat perfectly still, after throwing our sticks into the remains of the fire, reduced now to a few glowing embers.
But there is one thing more of which I must speak, that is the third duck, which, certainly the best cooked and least burned of the three, had been served to table; that is to say, its burnt stick had been stuck in the sand between us, and there it was, nicely cooling down, and looking tempting in the extreme.
Pomp looked at me, and I looked at Pomp.