“De paniole, ma’am:” answered Jack.
“Tell me, Jack, will you; tell me quickly,” said Mrs. Willmington, now waxing impatient, “where is your master and the other servants?”
“Let me see if dey gane,” said Jack, and he walked on tiptoe towards the door, then carefully and cautiously peeped out, then ventured a little way into the courtyard, then ran hurriedly towards the great gate, and bolted it and rebolted it.
“Awh!” he cried, “Garamighty! Dey gane now! awh! me, neber see such ting in all my barn days. Wha dat? Me hab time foo blow now: put big, big, bundle so nan me mout! tap my breath, awh! But me can blow now—tshwh, tshwh!” and Jack took along breath in the fashion which seems to be peculiar to his people—a fashion which compresses a vast quantity of air, and sends it vehemently forth, so that the same hissing noise which the steam makes when it comes through the valve of a railway engine, is produced. A fashion which, be it said within parentheses, may be very economical, inasmuch as it affords a certain large amount of respiration within a certain small period of time.
This soliloquy, in the making of which, the illustrious cook by no means limited himself as to time, being over, and after having cast searching glances about the gate, and having looked and relooked above, below, sideways, before, and behind, Jack then, and not till then, deemed it proper to return to his mistress, who had also come to the door, and was endeavouring to discover what the cook was about.
“Me shet it, ma’am, me shet it,” cried Jack, as he returned.
“Now, perhaps, you will tell me what I ask,” said Mrs. Willmington, getting still more excited and angry, “where is your master?”
“Tap, missus,” answered Jack, “I’ll tell you all bout it.”
“Make haste, then.”
“Yes, missus,” said Jack, and began to tell all about it. He had the preliminary caution, however, of looking carefully round to see if no more “paniole,” as he called the pirates, were concealed thereabouts. Being for the time satisfied on that point, he proceeded—