“What are you looking at?” said Rob.
“Nothing, but looking out for squalls.”
“Change of weather?”
“Nay, not yet. I meant Indian squalls. I didn’t know as there were to be no watch kept, or I wouldn’t have slept. It ain’t safe, my lad, to go to sleep close to the shore this side.”
“Why! Wild beasts?”
“Nay, wild Indians, as hates the whites, and would come out from under the trees in their canoes and attack us if they knowed we were here. I told the skipper so, but he’s like them ’talians: knows everything himself, so that he as good as told me to mind my own business, and so I did. But this side of the river’s all savage and wild, my lad. The people had rough hard times with the old Spaniards, so that every white man’s a Spaniard to them, and if they get a chance it’s spear or club.”
Rob looked rather nervously along the interlacing trees hung with the loveliest of vine and creeper, and then jerked his line.
“Ah, it’s all right enough, sir, if you keep your eyes open. I can’t, you see: only one.”
“How did you lose your eye, Shaddy?”
“Tiger,” said the man shortly.