“Well, that’s real, Master Nic. I dunno, though; p’raps it aren’t, and I want it cut short. It would be horrid to wake up and find it all zleep-hatching; but the longer I go on the worse I shall be. It’s dreaming, aren’t it, and we didn’t get away?”
“You know it is not a dream, Pete,” replied Nic. “We have escaped—I mean, we have begun to escape.”
“Begun, lad? Why, we’ve half-done it,” cried Pete, who was wild with excitement. “Pull away, and let’s zhow ’em what West-country muscles can do. Pull lad, pull, and keep me at it, or I zhall be getting up and dancing zailor’s hornpipe all over the boat, and without music. Music! Who wants music? My heart’s full of music and zinging of home again, and I don’t know what’s come to my eyes. Master Nic, all this river, and the trees, and fog rising on each zide through the trees, looks zo beautiful that I must be dreaming. Zay, lad, do tell me I ra-ally am awake.”
“Yes, Pete, awake—wide awake; and I am feeling just the same. My heart’s beating with hope as it never beat before.”
“Hooroar for Master Nic’s heart!” cried the big fellow wildly. “Beat away, good old heart, for we’re going to do it, and it’ll be just as easy as kissing your hand.”
“We mustn’t be too sanguine.”
“Oh yes, we must, lad. I don’t know what being zangwing is, but if it’s anything to do with fancying we shall get away, I zay let’s be as zangwing as we can. None of your getting into the dumps and ‘shan’t do it’ now. We’re free, my lad—free; and I should just like to have a cut at any one as zays we aren’t. Zlaves, indeed! White zlaves! But I knowed it couldn’t last. You can’t make a zlave of an Englishman, Master Nic. You may call him one, and put irons on him, or shut him up like zyder in a cask, and hammer the bung in; but zooner or later he’ll zend the bung out flying, or burst the hoops and scatter the staves. It was only waiting our chance, and we’ve got it; and here we are rowing down this here river in the boat, and they may hoe the old plantation themselves. Zay, Master Nic.”
“Yes, Pete.”
“Don’t it zeem strange what a differ a black skin makes in a man?”
“What do you mean—in the colour?”