All are now convinced that the crisis, long apprehended, has come; and, with their weapons in hand, stand ready to meet it. Still, the savages appear to disagree, as the debate is prolonged. Can it be that, after all, there is mercy in their breasts? Something like it surely stirs Annaqua, who seems endeavouring to dissuade the others from carrying out the purpose of which most are in favour. Perhaps the gifts bestowed on him have won the old man’s friendship; at all events, he appears to be pleading delay. Ever and anon he points in the direction of the cranberry ridge, as though urging them to wait for those gone after the whale; and once he pronounces a word, on hearing which Henry Chester gives a start, then earnestly listens for its repetition. It is—as he first thought—“Eleparu.”
“Did you hear that?” asks the young Englishman in eager haste.
“Hear what?” demands Ned Gancy, to whom the question is addressed.
“That word ‘Eleparu.’ The old fellow has spoken it twice!” says Henry.
“Well, and if he has?” queries Ned.
“You remember our affair at Portsmouth with those three queer creatures and the wharf-rats?”
“Of course I do. Why do you ask?”
“One of them, the man, was named Eleparu,” answers Chester; adding, “The girl called him so, and the boy too.”
“I didn’t hear that name.”
“No?” says Henry; “then it must have been before you came up.”