“But I should say,” said the doctor, “that when these men see how firm we are and well prepared, they will prove peaceable enough.”
As it proved in a short time after colours had been hoisted, those of the French brig being raised upon a spare spar, the stranger came steadily on in the most peaceable way till the tide had carried her within reasonable distance of the schooner’s anchorage, when an order rang out, an anchor was lowered with a splash, and as she swung slowly round, a light boat was dropped from the davits, and a swarthy-looking Spaniard, who seemed to be an officer if not the skipper of the swift-looking raking craft, had himself rowed alongside the schooner. A brief colloquy took place in which questions and answers freely passed, Captain Chubb speaking out frankly as to the object of their mission there, an avowal hardly necessary, for the appearance of the brig with the newly-cut hole, and her position, told its own story.
The Spanish skipper, for so he proved to be, was just as free in his announcements as soon as he found that the brig and schooner were friendly vessels, and began to explain that he was on a trading expedition, that there was a king of the country up there, a great black chief, who had a large town, and that he came from time to time with stores to barter, which he always did with great advantage, going away afterwards pretty well laden with palm-oil and sundries, which the blacks always had waiting for his annual visit, these sundries including, he said, with a meaning laugh, ostrich feathers, choice dye woods, ivory, and a little gold.
He spoke strongly accented but very fair English, and made no scruple about coming on board the schooner and examining her critically as he talked.
“I thought at first, captain, that you had found out my private trading port and were going to be a rival;” whereupon the doctor began chatting freely with him and asking questions about the natural products of the place; and Rodd listened eagerly, drinking in the replies made by the Spanish captain as soon as he thoroughly realised the object of the schooner’s visit and the bearing of the doctor’s questions.
He soon became eagerly communicative regarding the wild beasts that haunted the forests, the serpents that were found of great size, the leopards and other wild cats that might be shot for their skins, the beauty of the plumage of the birds, and above all the wondrous size of the apes that haunted the trees.
“There’s gold too to be washed out of the soil,” he said, looking hard at Rodd; “but don’t you touch it. Leave that to the blacks.”
“Why?” said Rodd.
“Because,” said the man, shaking a fore-finger at him, upon which was a thick gold ring, “the white men who turn up the wet earth to wash it out get fever.”
“But,” said the doctor, “we have not come gold-hunting. And so there are great apes in these forests? Have you seen them?”