"Nay," said Dudley, "so long as they are within my charge, nothing stronger than water shall pass their lips."
"But," persisted the Captain, "if all I hear on shore be true, I take it ye are trying to drive a bargain with them imps. Now, have ye never noticed that the best time to trade with a man is when half a dozen glasses have warmed his heart?"
"Peace," said Dudley, "no more of this. We came to see the ship and not to trespass on thy mistaken hospitality."
"The lubberly milksop!" muttered the Captain betwixt his teeth. "But what," he added aloud, "are the red skins looking at so sharp out to sea?"
While this conversation had been going on, the attention of the savages had been arrested by an object floating on the water. It rose and fell on the heaving sea, at one moment visible, and at the next hid from view. At first it had been impossible to say what it was. It might be a spar, or plank, or any part of a shipwrecked vessel. The tide was coming in, and the object became more and more distinct, until an old sailor, whose experienced eyes had also been attracted sea-ward, exclaimed,
"Captain, I'm a green hand, and never weathered the Cape, if there ben't a man lashed on yon spar."
"By St. George's cross, but I believe thou art right, Dick Spritsail," cried the Captain. "It's some poor fellow, I warrant me, whose ship has gone down, and who made a raft to try his luck. Johnny Shark, do ye see, is no pleasant customer to become acquainted with, and so he took a venture on the spar for a Christian burial, instead of making Jonah's viage."
"It's no Christian," replied Dick, "unless the waters in these latitudes have the faculty to turn a man black."
The sailor had hardly pronounced the last words, when one of the Indians, divesting himself of the skin that covered his shoulders, leaped from the side of the ship, and swam in the direction of the object which had attracted their attention. It would seem that his keen eyes, like those of the sailor, had detected the body, and that, unable to repress his curiosity, he had taken this method to satisfy it. Amid the loud and wondering exclamations of the white men, and the subdued gutturals of the Indians, whose straining eyes betrayed their interest, the swimmer, with lusty strokes, breasted the green billows as they came rolling into the bay. When he reached the floating mass he carefully examined it, and then raised a wail sadder than the cry of the loon over the dark waves, when it anticipates the coming storm. It was responded to by his companions on board the ship, in a yell of mingled rage and grief, that was heard in all parts of the village, and far over the water.
"What possesses the imps now?" cried the Captain, as two more Indians, following the example of their tribesman, plunged into the water. "I wonder what they have found?"