“Not if I can help it, boy, but look at the fellow; he has been painting himself, and means war.”
In effect Shanter’s black body was streaked with white, as if to imitate a skeleton, and as he came running toward them from the scrub below the precipice, he looked as if his spear was held threateningly in one hand, his club in the other.
As the black came running from one direction, the captain ran toward them from the other, shouting to Uncle Jack and the boys to fall back, while just then Sam German came out of the garden armed with a pitchfork, the first thing likely to act as a weapon.
But Shanter was the swiftest of foot, and he was within twenty yards, when Uncle Jack presented his piece and shouted: “Stop! Throw down that spear.”
Shanter hesitated for a moment, and then dug the point of his spear into the ground, and ran up shouting: “Hi, Marmi, black fellow come along! Kimmeroi—bulla, bulla—metancoly.” (One, four, ever so many.)
The captain gazed at him suspiciously.
“Where?” he said.
“Black fellow all along,” cried Shanter, who seemed to have quite forgotten the past night’s quarrel and the blow, and he pointed in several directions across the precipitous ridge.
“You saw them?”
“Yohi. Run tell Marmi. Black fellow come all along, spear bull-cow.”