The Carib pitched off his green wrapping, sat down upon his chair and stretched out his legs for his seconds to massage them. His reddish-brown skin moved with the play of healthy muscle: he shone with health and oil.
“Yes,” Mr. Wiskey muttered, staring at the Carib, “you may listen and you may glisten, but you’ll go where the nightshade twineth if you put the cross on little ’Arry Wiskey.”
“So this is Chico,” the Captain said. “Well, Mr. Harker, he looks to me liker a panther than a human being. I must say that I do not like to see these cannibals pitted against Christians. I am in two minds about staying.”
“Sir, I expect he is as good a Christian as the other. And he may not be nearly so good a fighter.”
“True,” the Captain said. “The Church has lost its hold here, as I was saying, but still I don’t think that even these modern Occidentales would let a Carib fight a Christian, if they thought that he stood a chance of winning. Where is this other, the Christian? I think, Mr. Harker, I will go get a cigar at the office, while this other man is being made ready, if you will keep my seat.”
“I will keep your seat, Captain Cary.”
After Captain Cary had edged away to buy a cigar, Sard waited for the two men in front to go on with their talk, for what they had said had interested him. He had not liked to be ranked with any other mate who knew no Spanish, and he wondered why Mr. Bloody Kingsborough was to have no show. Who was Mr. Bloody Kingsborough? He did not know the name. The tone in which the name was pronounced suggested that Mr. Kingsborough was judged to give himself airs. Sard judged that if Mr. Kingsborough did not take good heed, he would be a bloodier Mr. Kingsborough before dawn. Chico was not to have much show in any case, but to have none if he disappointed Mr. Wiskey. Sard hoped that the talk would go on, but it did not. Mr. Wiskey began to eat a pomegranate by tearing off the skin with his teeth and spitting it out into the ring.
“He’s a dirty shining yellow snake,” he said at last in English, meaning Chico; “Palm-oil all over him. It’s that that gives them leprosy in their old age. Yah, you dirty Carib,
Knocky, knocky neethy
On your big front teethy.