"I might as well have hallooed to the wind in a tearing pampero or a stiff reef-topsail breeze, Master Rodney, as have attempted to oppose this piece of Congo kindness. In a minute I was hove down under the nasty black paws of five-and-forty howling and jabbering niggers, all smearing me with palm-oil out of calabashes and old gallipots, and they persisted in rubbing it into me till all my skin was nearly peeled off.
"Then the old Fetish-man who lived in the root of the tree, after making three summersets and uttering six howls, ornamented all my face, hands, and arms in this fashion, using a kind of knife, which he dipped from time to time in some black stuff that he carried in a cocoanut-shell. In ten minutes I was all over serpents and circles, stripes, pothooks and hangers!
"It went to my heart to have my beauty spoiled, but I was far past making any opposition, and so I have had to go through life in all weathers, with a face like the clown's in a pantomime.
"They made me so like a nigger that they scarcely knew me from one of themselves. This so favored my escape, that I soon found an opportunity of giving the Mussolongos the slip in the night, and made a shift, after many a break-heart adventure, to reach a British settlement.
"I remember well when, from a wild forest, I saw before me a long blue ridge. It was the Sierra Leona—or the Mountain of the Lioness, as the niggers thereabout call it—the highest in North or South Guinea. Glad was I, Master Rodney, to see the flag of Old England waving on the fort and in the bay. There was a sloop of war at anchor there, the Active; and when she fired the evening gun you would have thought a whole fleet was saluting, there are so many echoing caves and dens in the mountains and along the shore.
"I soon made my way home to England, but was more laughed at than pitied for my queer figure-head, which frightened some folks, my old mother especially, for she banged the door right in my face, and called for the police when I went to her old bunk at Deptford.
"However, I got used to all that sort of thing; but as folks are so ill-bred and uncharitable ashore, I have left Deptford forever, and keep always afloat, to be out of harm's way. So that's the yarn of how I became tattooed, Master Rodney."
"Finish the brandy-and-water, Tom," said I; "and now we shall make a start for the brig—noon is past, and the atmosphere cooler than it was."
"Your very good health. Next time we splice the main-brace ashore, I hope it will be in Cuba," said Tom, finishing the contents of my flask, and then becoming so jovial that he broke at once into an old sea-song, the last two verses of which were somewhat to this purpose:
"I learned to splice, to reef, and clew,
To drink my grog with the best of the crew,
And tell a merry story;
And though I wasn't very big,
Aloft I'd climb; nor care a fig
To stand by my gun, or dance a jig,
And all for Britain's glory!