“Afterwards we found the critters couldn’t speak a word of English, ner tell us even what their names were. So we called one Nux, and the other Bryonia, accordin to the medicine that had saved their lives, an’ they’ve answered to those names ever since.”
The blacks were gentle and good-natured, and being grateful for their rescue they had refused to leave the ship at the end of the voyage, and were now permanent fixtures of the “Flipper.”
“They are not slaves, are they?” I asked, when I had listened to this story.
“Mercy, no!” exclaimed Uncle Naboth. “They’re as free as any of us, an’ draw their wages reg’lar. Also they’re as faithful as the day is long, an’ never get drunk or mutinous. So it were a lucky day when we picked ’em up.”
Bryonia stood fully six feet in height, and was muscular and wonderfully strong. He had a fine face, too, and large and intelligent eyes. Nux was much shorter, and inclined to be fat. But he was not a bit lazy, for all that, and accomplished an immense amount of work in so cheerful a manner that never a complaint was laid at his door. Not a sailor could climb aloft with more agility or a surer foot, and both Nux and Bryonia were absolutely fearless in the face of danger.
Although these men were black they were not Negroes, but belonged to a branch of the Malay race. Their hair was straight, their noses well formed and their eyes very expressive and intelligent. The English they had picked up from the crew, however, was spoken with an accent not unlike that peculiar to the African Negroes, but with a softer and more sibilant tone.
Before I had been on the ship a week both Nux and Bry were my faithful friends and devoted followers, and in the days that were to come their friendship and faithfulness stood me in good stead.
A very interesting person to me was big Bill Acker, the mate, called by courtesy “Doc.” He seemed far above his mates in the matter of intelligence, and was evidently a well bred man in his youth. A shelf above his bunk bore a well-thumbed row of volumes on the world’s great religions, together with a Talmud, a Koran, a Bible, the works of Confucius and Max Müller’s translation of the Vedas. One seemed to have been as thoroughly read as the others, yet never have I heard Doc Acker say one word, good or bad, about religion. Whatever the result of his studies might be, he kept his opinions strictly to himself.
A stiff breeze sprang up during the first night, and the second day at sea found me miserably ill, and regretting that I had ever trusted myself to the mercies of cruel old ocean. Indeed, I lay in a most pitiable plight until the big Englishman came to me with doses of medicines from his chest. He might have been merely “a hoss doctor,” as Uncle Naboth had said; but certain it is that his remedies helped me, and within twenty-four hours I was again able to walk the deck in comfort.
Perhaps I had inherited some of my father’s fondness for salt water, for my new life soon became vastly interesting to me, and it was not long before I felt entirely at home on the dingy old “Flipper.”