Chapter Thirty Nine.
Ebo’s Song of Triumph.
When I came to, it was with a terrible pain in my head, and a misty feeling of having been taken by the savages, who had laid me down and were having a war-dance of triumph around me.
“Hi, yi, yi—Hi, yi, yi—Hi, yi, yi!”
Then it kept on in a shrill tone till it seemed, as my head ached so badly, almost maddening.
At last I raised my heavy eyelids and saw that instead of lying on the sand surrounded by savages, I was some distance from the shore and in the boat. I could dimly see, as through a mist, the savages on the beach, and they were shouting, yelling, and threatening us with their war-clubs; but it was Ebo who was apparently about to dance the bottom out of the boat, and keeping up that abominable “Hi, yi, yi!” his song of triumph for the victory he had won.
“Hi, yi, yi—Hi, yi, yi—Hi, yi, yi! hey!”
The Hey! was accompanied by a tremendous jump, and a flourish of the spear at the savages on shore, whom the defiance seemed to madden as they rushed about furiously waving their clubs and yelling with all their might. Sometimes they dashed into the water right to their chests, some swam out with their war-clubs in their teeth, and some went through a pantomime in which we were all supposed to be beaten down and being pounded into jelly upon the shore.
All this delighted Ebo, who varied his war-song by making derisive gestures, showing his utter contempt for his cowardly enemies, all of which seemed to sting them to fury, and I began to wonder how we should get on if they had canoes.