“I don't half like the look of it,” replied Don uneasily; “they shouldn't leave the diving grounds, you know, until the signal gun's fired. I wish the guv was here.”
“Wishing's no good when he's ashore,” said Jack philosophically. “You're the skipper pro tem., and you must make the most of your promotion, old fellow. We'll have some fun, anyhow. Whew! how those niggers pull, and what a jolly row they're making!”
By this time the excited cries, which had first attracted the attention of those upon the schooner's deck, had been exchanged by the boatmen for a weird chant, to which every oar kept time. Erect in the stern of the foremost boat an old whiteheaded tyndal or “master” led the song, while at the end of each measure a hundred voices raised a chorus that seemed fairly to lift the boats clear of the water.
“What are they singing, anyway?” demanded Jack. “There's something about a diver and a shark in it, but I can't half make it out, can you?”
“We'll call Puggles—he'll be able to tell us. Pug! Hi, Pug! come here.”
“Coming, sa'b!” answered a voice from the cook's galley; and almost simultaneously there appeared on deck the plumpest, shiniest, most good-natured looking black boy that ever displayed two raws of pearly teeth. Nature had, apparently, pulled him into the world by the nose, and then, as a sort of finishing touch to the job, had given that organ a sharp upward tweak and left it so. It was to this feature that Puggles owed his name.
“Pug,” said his master, “tell us what those boatmen yonder are singing.”
The black boy cocked his ears and listened for a moment with parted lips. “Boat-wallahs this way telling, sa'b,” said he; and, catching the strain of the chant, he repeated the words of each line as it fell from the lips of the old tyndal:
“Salambo selling the diver one charm,
Salaam, Alii kum!