The circumstances under which the old sailor made these reflections were such as to render the last hypothesis sufficiently probable. He was being pushed about and dragged over the ground by two men, armed with long curved scimitars, contesting some point with one another, apparently as to which should be first to cut off his head!
Both of these men appeared to be chiefs, “sheiks”, as the sailor heard them called by their followers; a party of whom, also with arms in their hands, stood behind each sheik, all seemingly alike eager to perform the act of decapitation.
So near seemed the old sailor’s head to being cut off, that for some seconds he was not quite sure whether it still remained upon his shoulders. He could not understand a word that passed between the contending parties; though there was talk enough to have satisfied a sitting of parliament, and probably with about the same quantity of sense in it.
Before it had proceeded far, the sailor began to comprehend, not from the speeches made, but the gestures that accompanied them, that it was not the design of either party to cut off his head. The drawn scimitars, sweeping through the air, were not aimed at his neck, but rather in mutual menace of one another.
Old Bill could see that there was some quarrel between the two sheiks, of which he was himself the cause; that the camp was not a unity consisting of a single chief, his family, and following; but that there were two separate leaders, each with his adherents, perhaps temporarily associated together for purposes of plunder.
That they had collected the wreck of the corvette, and divided the spoils between them, was evident from the two heaps being kept carefully apart, each piled up near the tent of a chief.
The old man-o’-war’s-man made his observations in the midst of great difficulties; for while noting these particulars, he was pulled about the place, first by one sheik, then by the other, each retaining his disputed person in temporary possession.
From the manner in which they acted, he could tell that it was his person that was the subject of dispute, and that both wanted to be the proprietor of it.