Nic smiled, for his companion’s good temper and patience were contagious, but he could not repress a sigh from time to time as he thought of home; and the beauty of the country, the waving fields of tasselled Indian-corn or beautiful sugar-cane, with the silver river beyond, the glorious slopes leading up to the distant blue mountains, and the gloomy, green, mysterious attraction of the swampy forest enhancing its attractions to an explorer, did not compensate for the absence of liberty, though Nic was fain to confess that the plantation would have been a glorious place for a few months’ visit.
The blacks were not friendly, as Nic soon found; but he attributed it to the stern orders they had received; but now and then one or another made a little advance, by offering, on the sly, fish or flesh in the shape of bird or ’possum which he had caught or trapped during the moonlight nights. For Saunders seemed to pay no heed to the black slaves slipping away of a night on some excursion.
“’Nuff to make a man wish for a kettle o’ tar, or a pot o’ black paint,” said Pete one day. “What for, sir? Just to put on a coat of it, and change the colour of one’s skin. They’d treat us better than they do. Makes me wish I was a nigger for a bit, so long as I could wash white when I got away.”
“Master Nic,” said Pete one night when they were alone in their bunks, “I aren’t going to share that bit o’ ’possum.”
“What bit of ’possum?” asked Nic, as he lay listening to the low murmur arising from where Humpy Dee was talking to his fellow-prisoners, who were all chewing some tobacco-leaf which the former had managed to secrete.
“Why, you know; that bit old Zamson give me, wrapped up in one o’ them big leaves.”
“Oh yes; I had forgotten. Eat it, then; I don’t mind.”
“Likely, aren’t it?” grumbled Pete. “Good as it smells, for them black fellows do know how to cook a thing brown and make it smell nice. Can’t you zee what I mean?”
“No.”
“Want it for the dogs. I’m going to slip off after that boat as soon as it’s a bit later.”