“What a pity!” murmured the Maroon; “if I could only speak a word. But no. Yonder John Crow is more like to hear it than he. I shall throw something down into the hammock. Maybe that will awake him?”
Cubina drew out his tobacco-pipe. It was the only thing he could think of at the moment; and, guiding his arm with a good aim, he pitched it into the hammock.
It fell upon the breast of the sleeper. It was too light. It awoke him not.
“Crambo! he sleeps like an owl at noontide! What can I do to make him feel me? If I throw down my macheté, I shall lose the weapon; and who knows I may not need it before I’m out of this scrape? Ha! one of these cocoa-nuts will do. That, I dare say, will be heavy enough to startle him.”
Saying this, the Maroon bent downward; and extending his arm through the fronds beneath him, detached one of the gigantic nuts from the tree.
Poising it for a moment to secure the proper direction, he flung the ponderous fruit upon the breast of Herbert. Fortunately the sides of the hammock hindered it from falling upon the floor, else the concussion might also have awakened the sleeper in the chair.
With a start, the young Englishman awoke, at the same time raising himself upon his elbow. Herbert Vaughan was not one of the exclamatory kind, or he might have cried out. He did not, however; though the sight of the huge brown pericarp, lying between his legs, caused him considerable surprise.
“Where, in the name of Ceres and Pomona, did you rain down from?” muttered he, at the same time turning his eyes up for an answer to his classical interrogatory.
In the grey light he perceived the palm, its tall column rising majestically above him. He knew the tree well, every inch of its outlines; but the dark silhouette on its top—the form of a human being couchant, and crouching—that was strange to him.
The light, however, was now sufficiently strong to enable him to distinguish, not only the form, but the face and features of his ci-devant entertainer under the greenwood tree—the Maroon captain, Cubina!