The German bent over to examine this countenance more carefully.
"By jiminy priest! I bet me anydings I know dot man!" he exclaimed, staring downward intently. "Vake up dere, you!" he called out, pushing the recumbent figure with his foot. "I know you, Red Pete! Dot's no use, your making out you vas asleep! Vake up, kvick now!" and he stirred him with his boot again.
"I bet he's dead," said Lafe.
No! The man half opened his eyes and moved his head restlessly. The color came back into his face, the muscles of which were drawn now into an angry scowl by pain. He fell back helpless after an instinctive effort to lift himself to a sitting posture. Then, shifting his head, he discovered the two friends, and fixed upon them a stolid, half-stupefied stare.
"How you like him, dot Red Pete, eh?" Foldeen burst forth, with exultation, never taking his jubilant glance from the face of the wretch on the ground. "Dots a beauty, ain'd it? Dot's a first-glass Ghristmas bresent, eh, to find in your shtocking! Or no, he is too big. Ve hang him on a dree, eh? A nize Ghristmas-dree, all by ourselves, eh? O Red Pete, you vas git the best place by dot dree, right in front, on the biggest branch!"
The man on the ground had been staring upward at the speaker in a puzzled fashion. He had slowly taken in the situation that he was disabled, bound hand and foot, and at the German's mercy. At last he seemed to recall who it was who was talking to him.
"I never done you no harm!" he growled.
"So-o!" ejaculated Foldeen, with loud sarcasm. "Dot vas no harm, eh, dot vas only some little fun, eh, to make me on fire und burn me up mit the rest in dot shteam-boat? Just some funny joke, eh? Veil, den, now I will haf me my funny liddle jokes mit you."
Speaking with such swift volubility that Lafe followed with difficulty the thread of his narrative, Foldeen unfolded a curious tale. Before the war he had drifted about in the South a good deal, playing in orchestras in New Orleans some of the time, and then for whole seasons travelling up and down the Mississippi in the bands of the old passenger steamers.
This man, Red Pete, was a well-known character on the river, too well known all the way from Cairo to the last levee. Sometimes he was in charge of a squad of slaves, sometimes travelling on his own account as a gambler, slave-buyer, or even for a trip as minor boat officer—but always an evil-minded scoundrel.