But mine host was at the moment too busily engaged with new guests to attend to questions of theology.
"You're out o' your reckoning there, Captain," said Bill Pantry. "It is a leopard—a sort o' wild beast, as one may say, that finds it unhandy to get rid of his spots. They are pricked in by natur', I take it, in a manner, with Indy ink, so that it isn't scrubbing will take 'em out."
"And why should not an Ethiopian have a right to spots as well as a leopard, or yourself, Bill, with a big anchor settling in the mud, on your right arm, and the Union Jack flying on 'tother. Answer me that, man, before you interrupt your superior officer again."
"Why, do ye see, Captain," Bill began.
But the impatient sailor waited for no answer to his question, for looking round, his eyes happened to fall on Arundel, with the Indian near him, and immediately rising, he approached them.
"How are ye, once more, my hearty?" he inquired, extending his hand to Arundel, while he looked at the Indian. "Is this one of the plenipo-po-pothecaries? That's not it, but it's as much like as children generally are to their fathers."
"Plenipotentiaries you mean," answered the young man, with a smile. "No, this is not a Taranteen; he is one of our own Massachusetts Bay countrymen."
"I thought," said the Captain, "he looked too young for such a line of business, though he looms up as grand as a king's ship. But these Indians, if they be heathens, have some wit as well as other folk, and they know that older chaps are fitter for the like of this here navigation. Howsoever, there's something that pleases me in the cut of your dark colored friend's jib. Would it be asking too much for the honor of an introduction?"
"Captain Sparhawk," said Arundel, "this is my noble friend Waqua, to whom I am under the greatest obligations."
The Captain offered his hand to the savage, who, acquainted with this custom of the whites, extended his own. As for what the seaman had been saying, Waqua had but an imperfect conception of it.