“That at least,” quietly assented Harry, “Sartin,” said the sailor. “They’ve let me know as much a’ready. There be two captains to their crew: one’s the smoke-dried old sinner as brought yer in; the other a big nayger, as black as the ace o’ spades. You saw the swab? He’s inside the tent here. He’s my master. The two came nigh quarrelling about which should have me, and settled it by some sort o’ a game they played wi’ balls of kaymals’ dung. The black won me; and that’s why I’m kep by his tent. Mother av Moses! Only to think of a British tar being the slave o’ a sooty nayger! I never thought it wud a come to this.”
“Where do you think they’ll take us, Bill?”
“The Lord only knows, an’ whether we’re all bound for the same port.”
“What! you think we may be separated?”
“Be ma saul, Maister Colin, I ha’e ma fears we wull!”
“What makes you think so?”
“Why, ye see, as I’ve telt ye, I’m booked to ship wi’ the black—‘sheik’ I’ve heerd them ca’ him. Well, from what I ha’e seed and heerd there’s nae doot they’re gaein’ to separate an’ tak different roads. I didna ken muckle o’ what they saved, but I could mak oot two words I ha’e often heerd while cruisin’ in the Gulf o’ Guinea. They are the names o’ two great toons, a lang way up the kintry, Timbuctoo and Sockatoo. They are negro toons: an’ for that reezun I ha’e a suspeshun my master’s bound to one or other o’ the two ports.”
“But why do you think that we are to be taken elsewhere?” demanded Harry Blount.
“Why, because, Master ’Aarry, you belong to the hold sheik, as is plainly a Harab, an’ oose port of hentry lies in a different direction, that be to the northart.”
“It’s all likely enough,” said Colin; “Bill’s prognostication is but too probable.”