"You are a little ahead of time, but considering everything it's fortunate," he said.
Desmond blinked at him for a moment or two. The man's face was lean and worn, and his thin, dew-drenched garments were torn by thorns. One of his boots had also burst, his wide hat was shapeless, and sunbaked mire clung about him to the knees.
"There were reasons why it seemed advisable to divide my party and push on," he proceeded. "My few personal belongings are now reposing in a swamp."
Desmond shook hands with him. "Well," he said, "it's like you. Where are your niggers, and what's the matter with my—sentries? Still that's not exactly what I meant to say."
Ormsgill laughed, and sent a shrill call ringing across the belt of mist below. There was an answer from it, and while the men from the Palestrina rose clamoring to their feet a row of weary, half-naked negroes plodded into camp. Some of them had red scars upon their dusky skin, some of them limped, and when they stopped at a sign from Ormsgill the seaman clustered round and gazed at them. They were woolly-haired and thick-lipped, and their weariness had worn all sign of intelligence out of their dusky faces. They looked at the clustering seamen vacantly and without curiosity.
"Lord," said Desmond, "and these are the fellows you have done so much for! Well, it's evidently my turn. I suppose they can eat?"
Ormsgill laughed. "A good deal just now. We started soon after sunrise, and have scarcely stopped all day. In fact, we have been marching rather hard the last week or two."
Desmond turned to one of the men he had brought with him. "Stir that fire," he said. "Make these images something, then take them away and stuff them."
He touched Ormsgill, and pointed to the strip of sheeting. "Get off your feet. We have a good deal to talk about."
They sat down, and by and by one of the Palestrina's stewards served them with coffee and canned stuff while his comrades sat in a ring about the negroes patting them on their naked shoulders and encouraging them to eat. The black men's stolidity vanished, and they grinned widely, while by degrees odd snatches of different languages and bursts of hoarse laughter rose from them. In the midst of it one big man chanted a monotonous song. Ormsgill laid down his cup and listened with a little smile.