Yes, the king is alone in his glory, though his spear-armed attendants wait outside. He is quite a study, this savage potentate, to any one fond of an anthropology. Look at him now! he is leaning his fat face on his podgy fingers, his elbows are resting on his knees—he is thinking.
There are but two things in this world that this king dearly loves; one is to see human blood spilled, the other is to drink gin or rum. These last two words are the only English ones he can pronounce or understand. He learnt them from itinerant Arabs, unscrupulous scoundrels, who bought the youth and flower of his people for a bottle each.
The king is thinking; the question that exercises his mind at present is this, “Shall I kill these white men, and laugh to see the red blood flow; or keep two, and send the others back for rum?”
“Room,” this is how he pronounces the word “rum,” and “gin” he calls “geen.”
“Room, room, room,” he mutters to himself, “geen, geen, geen.”
He rises; a thought strikes him. May it not be possible that one, just one full bottle remains still among that heap of empty ones? He goes straight to the heap, and turns them over. No, not one. Still, he has a glimmering notion that in a dazed moment he hid one. Ha! he remembers all of a sudden. He seizes the stick with which he is wont to beat the tom-tom, and hies him to a corner, and speedily unearths, not one bottle, but two.
He is a joyful king now. He whacks the tom-tom, and summons two of his wives to squat beside him; not to help him to drink, but to see him drink.
Then he summons Essequibo, and launches questions at him. “How long will he take to fatten? How long before he be ready to kill? Do the white men tremble to die?”
“No,” Keebo tells him; “they rejoice to die because their spirits will go to a glorious land of flowers and sunshine.”
The king gets blue with rage. He whacks Keebo with the tom-tom stick, and he whacks his wives; then he declares that the white men shall not die, that their spirits shall not go to the glorious land of flowers and sunshine.