They certainly appeared to do so by the murmurs that rose from them, and Ormsgill pointed to Desmond. He had pledged himself to set them at liberty, he said, and his friend would take them to a country where negroes were reasonably paid for their services, and, unless they deserved it, very seldom beaten. What was more to the purpose, if they did not like the factory they worked at they could leave it and go to another, which was a thing that appeared incomprehensible to them, until a man with a blue stripe down his forehead stood up and told them it certainly was as Ormsgill had said. He had himself earned as much by twelve months' labor at a white man's factory as would have kept him several years in luxury. Then one of the boys, a thick-lipped, woolly-haired pagan with nothing about him that suggested intelligence or sensibility asked Ormsgill a question in the native tongue, and the latter looked at Desmond.
"He asks if I can give my word that they will not be ill-used in Nigeria, and it's a good deal to assure them of," he said. "Still, I think it could be done. There are outcasts in those factories, men outside the pale, and it's possible that some of them occasionally belabor a nigger with a wooden kernel-shovel, but considering what the negro is accustomed to in this country that is a little thing, and they usually stop at it. After all, it is not men of their kind who practice systematic oppression or grind the toiler down. When I was a ragged outcast it was the men outside the pale who held out their hands to me."
He turned to the negro saying a few words quietly, and there was a low murmuring until one of the boys pointed to Desmond.
"Then," he said, "we are ready to go with him."
Even Desmond could understand all that this implied, and it stirred the hot Celtic blood in him. It was a crucial test of faith, for it seemed that these half-naked bushmen had a confidence in his comrade which no one acquainted with the customs of the country could reasonably have expected of them. They knew how their fellows were driven by men of his color, but in face of that his word that it should not be so with them was, it seemed, sufficient.
"You already understand my wishes, and here are the letters for the two traders in Nigeria," said Ormsgill quietly. "There is nothing more to say."
"There's just this," said Desmond turning towards the Palestrina's men, who had naturally been listening. "If it costs me the yacht to do it I'll see these boys safe into the right hands."
The men from Belfast Lough and Kingston grinned approvingly. They and their leader were, after all, of the same temperament, and one of them carried a sharp-pointed iron bar and others stout ash stretchers which they had, somewhat to their regret, not been called upon to do anything with yet. Desmond, however, walked a little apart with Ormsgill.
"When will you be back?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Ormsgill. "There is a good deal against me just now. In any case, I expect nothing further from you. You have done more than I would have asked of anybody else already."