In ten minutes time we and our dusky foes were far apart indeed, the savages having a grand canoe race back to the wreck, we dancing away over the waves and heading straight for the east.
“Thank Heaven,” said Ritchie, fervidly, “they’re gone.”
“Do you think we could have beaten them off, Ritchie?” I asked.
“One can never tell how things will go in a hand-to-hand fight. Not as ever I’ve been in many, but, bless your innocent soul, lad, I’ve come through so much. I came to close quarters once on the African shore with a crowd o’ canoes just like that. I could have sworn we’d have beaten them off easy. And so we might have done, if our boats had continued on an even keel. But that wasn’t their game. No, they threw themselves like wild cats on one gunwale, and over we went. They had us in the water; and by the time a boat shoved off from the Wasp and came to our assistance, there was hardly a man among us left to tell tales.”
“That was fearful!”
“Ye see—haul aft the main sheet a bit—you see, sir, mostly all savages has their own ways o’ fightin’, their own tactics as you might say. Drat ’em all, I say.”
“You don’t believe in the noble savage?” said Jill.
“Not same’s they make ’em nowadays, sir. ’Cause why, we white men have spiled them. And now we want to kill ’em all off the face o’ the earth. It’s just like an ignorant old party having a dog for a pet. He’s everything at first, and the very cat takes liberties with him, till one day he snaps. It’s only natural, but what does the ignorant old party do?—why puts him in a bag and drowns him. It’s the same wi’ the savage: the white man has spoiled him, and now he thinks he’d better get rid of him entirely. Well, young gentlemen, by your leave I’ll have a smoke. You’ve got the compass all right, Mr Jill? Thank ye. ’Cause if the weather changes for the worst, then—”
“Hush, hush. Why you are a pessimist!”
“I don’t know that ship. But never mind. You don’t smoke?”